Of Sundays - The Third Ben Mazer Poem In As Many Weeks

Eyewear is glad to continue the new, and slightly eccentric tradition, of featuring a poem by American poet Ben Mazer on Sundays. I love his exploration of rhyme, mania and poetic excess in this poem, which has a Paterian flavour to its style.

Gethsemane

You were insane, and I was sane,

now you are sane, and I'm insane.

I met you first in Gethsemane

when you are gone, and I remain.

The gardens there were lightly flush

at introduction of your blush

the kissing shadows nightly touch

time shadows render from the flesh.

The very bushes seemed to move

with attitudes approaching love

at the last moment to reprove

as if they didn't want enough.

Where earlier entering the town

calm was embedded in reknown

(directly it descends from this

perfect betrayal of a kiss).

The stirring petal on the bush

ignited by the kiss of flesh

the fragrance stirring in the air

shimmering like a distant star

the evidence that you are there

though even now it seems so far.

When you are gone, we meet again

when like a shadow fame and name

are predictably the same.

Men view the son, the desert plain;

when you are gone, we meet again.

poem by Ben Mazer

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