The Poet Behind the Poem

   by Dick Bakken

I.

You must burn this poem, and the others,
as you would burn memories from the heart—

Take my better poem to your arms, you and
his father—bless with your double love.

Though your son has not my name, his eyes will
grow as mine until he does not understand

his tears or from whom they have come.
Never will you say his father was a poet,

but always—he is a man. Your man loves
much, giving his name to my unplanned poem

that he might have you. He who lifts my
burden, takes my respect, has my love.


II.

My children, my wife—they come for my heart
with extended palms. She knows and forgives;

they, straddling my knees, laugh into my eyes
with eyes shaped as mine—laughing as I once

must have laughed. Promise never to see me
or the baby—you say—I marry in a month.

A father’s love, and a lover’s—how show it—
over miles, years, silences—only in my word?

I cannot give my word, only my words. I am
happy for you and sad. Can I be indignant?

claim you? reject you? I have worked myself
into the ambiguity of my poems. There is no

longer definition—only what is. To whom
do I belong? 0 lovers and sons, my family!


III.

As always, I step from my life to live
in my poems. Is it sin to stalk dreams

and memories, or souls, and lech from them
these few words? Have I the right to shape

our lives? Was I wrong to make you grow?
For I have shaped you, as I shaped her,

and you will shape him also to my vision—
because his eyes are mine. You may never

burn the poem growing inside you. You are
my poem, and in you is my poem. That must

be my only claim and comfort: where I
have known and shaped, the poem is mine.


IV.

So you would not belong to a poet—because
I see through words to the heart, would make

them one, shape and reshape you to my vision
—because speaking and speaking, I do not act,

only blame in riddles, step between you and
yours, comb wind and moonlight from your hair.

And you say —because your son and pregnant wife . . .
No, love, with words I seduce you, with words

I blame you, with words I lose you always and
win you again and lose you forever with words.


V.

Though you burn my poems to dust for the wind,
you will have always that speaking part of me—

to make you hate, and make you love. And I
will wonder always as I write: Did we love

that I might write? Do I write because
we loved? Did we love as I have written?


VI.

Would you plead that he never know
the truth in a poem? Would you save him

sadness by keeping him in the garden?
Oh, we have known, and always our poem

has been   You, my love—the moment.
Love, look at us now—a moment’s bliss.

We can no longer live in that moment,
knowing moments twist consequences,

and now we possess them as surely as we
possess our past. How measure the worth?

Is it inevitable that he and my wife
should accept in a moment the burdens

of our moment’s abandon? A new life—
a new death—can a paradox be a path?


VII.

Let my burning words bless.

Stand as you have stood, kneel
as they have kneeled, give and accept
as I have written—love as you must.

The poem is for you and for us, for him,
for one who reads, one who does not,
for my family, and for my family.