The Hearts
The legendary muscle that wants and grieves,
The organ of attachment, the pump of thrills
And troubles, clinging in stubborn colonies
Like pulpy shore-life battened on a jetty.
Slashed by the little deaths of sleep and pleasure,
They swell in the nurturing spasms of the waves,
Sucking to cling; and even in death itself—
Baked, frozen—they shrink to grip the granite harder.
“Rid yourself of attachments and aversions”—
But in her father’s orchard, already, he says
He’d like to be her bird, and she says: Sweet, yes,
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing,
Showing that she knows already—as Art Pepper,
That first time he takes heroin, already knows
That he will go to prison, and that he’ll suffer
And knows he needs to have it, or die; and the one
Who makes the General lose the world for love
Lets him say, Would I had never seen her, but Oh!
Says Enobarbus, Then you would have missed
A wonderful piece of work, which left unseen
Would bring less glory to your travels. Among
The creatures in the rock-torn surf, a wave
Of agitation, a gasp. A scholar quips,
Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual,
Bisexual, or heterosexual, the sonnets
Provide no evidence on the matter. He writes
Romeo an extravagant speech on tears,
In the Italian manner, his teardrops cover
His chamber window, says the boy, he calls them crystals,
Inanely, and sings them to Juliet with his heart:
The almost certainly invented heart
Which Buddha denounces, in its endless changes
Forever jumping and moving, like an ape.
Over the poor beast’s head the crystal fountain
Crashes illusions, the cold salt spume of pain
And meaningless distinction, as Buddha says,
But here in the crystal shower mouths are open
To sing, it is Lee Andrews and The Hearts
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poem by Robert Pinsky
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