Untitled Poem by Barry Middleton

'No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry connaissance'.
From: Le Monocle de Mon Oncle: by Wallace Stevens

I grow quite weary of it, but they do persist,
believers and infidels squabbling over nothing.
If fools could see, a better world would be,
to treasure what is, and not a fool's illusion.

And so there is a taste of apples in a kiss,
to foster poetry of bliss and, with the passing,
a desire for everlasting life, as old men
pray and concoct verses to another spring.

Love and life are a sunrise and a red hot noon
beneath the fusion of a violent star, fire seeming
infinite, grand but just the meaningless gesture
of a single careless law beginning in destruction.

The noon day blue fades at evening to a black
reunion of the stars and water, but not before
a nuclear sunset reminds me of the end to come,
and makes me believe the world dies in fire.

When men are well past forty, some will know,
the angels came and left upon the lost wind,
and all the song, so lovely then, is crying now,
cacophony and prelude to a silent intermission.

It may add up to only this, the knowing, a breeze,
the springtime lily wet with dew, another morning,
and not to mourn but emulate the creatures sigh,
as sleep comes again, awaiting one more dawn.