Eyewear is thrilled to feature a new poem by famed American poet, anthologist, and critic David Lehman this Tuesday. The photo above, by Star Black, features Lehman with John Ashbery, on February 8th of this year.
Sermon on the Mount
Ye spirits that hover above,
bear witness to my quest
and I shall prove
as tall a teller of tales
as ever stopped a wedding guest.
If love sometimes fails,
does lust never lie?
On manna and honeydew fed,
the dreamers moan and sigh.
The truth is acted out in bed.
Can you divorce the act
of love from the fact
of death? No, and neither can I,
nor tell in what sense
the action may differ from the essence.
Bitter constraint, in darkness bred,
carves out of the marble of lust
a nymph obedient, with upraised head,
kneeling before him in whom she trusts,
in the chapel where her hormones led.
new poem by David Lehman
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