Crushed Wings of Longing

Crushed Wings of Longing

Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse

“Some say he was around sixty-three years old when he met his death”

~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets

Much longer than the greatest poet I

Have lived.  We have no notion just how much

He wrote.  Our image (greater than the sky)

Of him is larger than a man can touch

With many thousand lines of verse, of blue

And white perfection.  Tens of thousands of

The purest sonnets — no matter how true —

Cannot trump Orpheus’s mythic love,

The love and deaths caught up in fate and song,

Because those poems are not doomed by hell.

No other poetry can be as strong

As gods and fate.  No sonnets can excel

Immortal death, not even if they kill

Bright adoration raised by ardor’s thrill.