The Inner Chronicle

The Inner Chronicle

How many yous have you been—

how many,

lining up inside you, to inspect you,

each one killing the last,

as in a process of creative self-destruction.

For the waiting soul knows no satisfaction.

He who fears runs crippled through the wound of time.

All your young dead—each one a sacrifice—

so that a single, unbreakable poetic core

could be expressed.

They fell like wildflowers,

claimed by madness,

with terrifying sublimity,

opening and dying in the sun.

All that childish dying,

so that you—

you, trembling like a moth—

might enter the bright eye.

You cast off your grey skin.

And finally—

finally—

you speak.

You exist,

in poetry.