The Secret of Poetry

By Jon Anderson, in memoriam

When I was lonely, I thought of death.
When I thought of death I was lonely.

I suppose this error will continue.
I shall enter each gray morning

Delighted by frost, which is death,
& the trees that stand alone in mist.

When I met my life I was lonely.
Our child in her body is lonely.

I suppose this error will go on & on.
Morning I kiss my wife's cold lips,

Nights her body, dripping with mist.
This is the error that fascinates.

I suppose you are secretly lonely,
Thinking of death, thinking of love.

I'd like, please, to leave on your sill
Just one cold flower, whose beauty

Would leave you inconsolable all day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.

Comments

[Mari]

A moving poem, and a very moving tribute by Steve Orlen. I'd never heard of Jon Anderson and wish I had while he was alive. Sounds like he was a remarkable human being. And I think he was onto something: aren't all of our poems about death, in the end, even the so-called "ecstatic" or "redemptive" poems? Death and loss are the shadow lining all of life, and Anderson seems to have had his finger on this undeniable reality: "The secret of poetry is cruelty."

Thanks for this.