Poetry at Sangam

Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.

YOUNG HUSBAND by Todd Swift

I am in the room of my marriage, when I had one.
Like a memory of a dead long gone ancestor,
Everything is polished with a certain conceit.
As if simply by passing, time became right.

I can see myself in error after error, as in
A dream that supposes it knows more deeply
Far into the summer heat of un-thought fire.
I want to save myself from the burning hubris

But won’t. That is the past’s glowing blindness.
It can’t look ahead but proudly affirms its place
At the central magnitude where all things radiate.
I hate the mute heft of the choices

I didn’t make; and the summer stupor
Of the ones I did. It didn’t amount to more.
I am the one who did the upsetting stuff
That knocked our vases to the floor. Vows.

All those rows, and tears, now mummified
As if the collapse of our civilisation was allowed
By chance and not design. History gets formed
Like lava takes the shape of what it flows around;

It’s messy but it hardens soon enough
Into what is sure and still and rough. I was there.
And so I moved about in languid haste
As if the casual spillage of those days would end.

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