Betrayal, by William Hathaway

Maurice Ravel - Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose)
with Martha Argerich and Lang Lan

It’s now all about money

about which poetry rarely reaches

transcendence. But love must still fester

even under that. Everyone I know

frets if poetry can still matter,

but what about love? It’s all become

too much for them, and they’re all

on the soma. It makes sense

with these pills when the someone

they thought they loved for years

by never thinking about it says,

“I don’t love you anymore,

but let’s stay friends in that mellow

woebegone way poetry now

sings without singing.” Of course,

they’re always asking “What is poetry?”

and then answering by saying

it’s what Boethius was thinking about

when they squished his head

until his eyes popped out,

or anything barbaric enough to get

everyone to stop eating for a bit

and reach for a moment past

a chatty moment. Sort of a solution

to awkward goodbyes. How money

becomes a sort of welcome

relief that defuses the poetry

charging tense moments. “Interesting,”

someone remarks between bites,

“to be right here in the moment

yet also out there watching

some once-in-a-lifetime sublimity

unfold, as if living as if already

dead.” As if standing in a dream far up

in the stars somewhere with Scipio

and seeing how little love matters,

or poetry for that matter,

considering how glory endures

only in glittering plunder. But best

of all, all of it stays just sort of

as if.

poem from Poetry (October 2009)