This Reply Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

This Reply



This reply is not directed towards you.
You may come into it tangentially
But no one will look for you here, or anywhere,
Because you will disappear long before my words do.

Even as you sit there, twitching,
Wishing you could be rid of me,
This poem and I are moving on
Beyond your vacuum to a place we can breathe.

It is not sad, only slightly pathetic.
What you remember as sadness, I recall as ennui,
This poem and I agree that what you and I had
Needed no peeling to be left as stripped as driftwood.

Your type of talent has no place here.
It is free to fade away like the stars at sunrise.
It is too pale to compete with the coming sun
Of the one who has replaced you in my life.

You neither could nor ever did know me.
Look, it comes without effort or sweat,
These words that I beget in neat rows
Expressing nothing but regret for having met you.

Open your eyes and pause in your writing.
Look at the woman you are not talking to.
She has forgotten you because you do not matter
Whatever beauty you see in your own verse.

Look into those mirrors you beseech.
Listen to the silence in my goodbye.
Since it does not matter what I think
I will leave you alone with the poem that is not about me.

Sunday, July 5, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: love and pain
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
I came across a poem by Donald Justice and wrote an imaginary reply to it. Here is Donald's poem:

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
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Suzanne Hayasaki

Suzanne Hayasaki

Menomonee Falls, WI, USA
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