Two men stand on a bridge, at evening, Discussing a third. Three men stand on a bridge, Representing a myth at evening. The men represent The myth; the bridge represents the men; The myth built the bridge. From this, we conclude, Rather too hastily, that the myth wanted To be represented. It built a bridge, And that ought to be enough.
II
The most accurate poem in things is, in any case, Always a dream that a bad poet is having. But if That bad poet were the poet they dreamed of being, They would unwrite the poem of their dreams, And absolve the world of a terrible accuracy.
III
New bridges are always built at night, and always Become old in daytime. Right now, things Are invisible and all is one– right now, absolutely Nothing more needs to be done. The world Hovers in the nearness of amber, and Humanity is an essential decoration sustained In bad and better dreams. A railway imitates twilight.
IV
When, eventually, love songs are written About this particular part of history, it will Be noted (somewhat ruefully) that evenings Are always the most difficult part of anything, But also the strangest. Strangeness is easy. It is almost perplexing how beautiful you are.
V
The inconvenient miracle of things, which settles Rather neatly here– the only difficulty being, as It were, decorative, a question of lighting and Composition– has supplied us with a temperature From which to look at each other. The most Accurate poem of that miracle needn’t be written, Or at least not yet, or at least not by me, which Comes almost to the same thing– almost, but Not quite all the way, which bothers me.
VI
I have written this poem as a nominal service To the miracle, as it were for a local festival Held on a bridge at evening, where two local Priests discuss a third– where three priests Represent a myth. I have written in honor of A myth, inasmuch as the myth supplies the bridge. There is a veneration in all of this, as I supply The oil for the anointment and make the necessary Gestures, as a bad poet dreams of being me. But My being part of the scene is only an illusion: One of the priests need only touch me to find That I’m not here. I do not sponsor the blood Sacrifice, and I will not be chanted Into their nighttime. I am trying to steal something.
VII
As a creative artist (and I’m assuming a directness of attitude Here), I do not want to add anything to the world, But to take something out of it with me when I go. I want Something old and easy to become difficult because I’ve described it– I want to make some piece of conventional Wisdom impossible to think. I want to be The mother of a new crime, walking in the morning Chill of innocence, surrounded high by aisles of sight, By hands that clasp the chill, by archives of a silence Whose articulation lifts through me, and through My eyes upturned to where a God might be. I want To spell a new and better innocence, with blue wisps And strange colognes preceding me into oblivion.
VIII
The world is very candid when you look at it– you See the way it changes, dips and ripples on the air, Whose surface, too, is falling with us. The dawn’s Heroic reservation masses on those hills. There will Be a time when absolutely everything is new.
Lucy Frost is an Arabic-American transgender woman poet from Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Serotonin Magazine, C*nsorship Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, Melbourne Culture Corner, and Unpublishable Magazine. She can be found on Twitter @intomymachine.