Barry Spacks - "Reading an Old Friend's Poems"

Reading an Old Friend's Poems

The wonderings and sweetness of this voice bring to my thought the scent of

fine paper, fine linen, shirt with a white collar for the first time worn, long

evening with a new book, dwelling over the pages.

But in its sayings of loss, this voice tastes blood on its teeth, tart taste of

blood that can neither be spit out nor swallowed.

In reverence for loveliness my friend's word-music comes upon me like air

before rain: remember?

that freshness, cool, ultimately delicate;

though air so offered may lift at times into a wind carrying sand, or into a

deluge to follow.

"Where will we go," asks the poem's voice, "when they send us away from

here?" the body gone from all its familiar desirings and gone this mind that

was a savoring, while its voice alone continues, a comfort to desire.

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Barry Spacks earns his keep as a persistently visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara after years of teaching at M.I.T. He's published many poems in various journals, paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, and seven poetry collections, the most extensive of which is SPACKS STREET: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, from John Hopkins. A CD of 42 poems, A PRIVATE READING, appeared in October 2000.

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