Regarding Brokenness

It is inevitable-

Life will break you.

We are fragile vessels,

carved of karmic clay,

cosmic crystal. We ring

like Tibetan bowls when

exalted; we fracture, like

diamonds, when struck.

Hope is what leaks

from cracked walls

and foundations

and windows and doors;

it rises through the roof

as history’s woodsmoke or

your ancestors’ lost remains.

 

You could marry a glazier-

he would replace your

windows, make you more

energy-efficient, less wasteful

with your broken moments.

Or let in an engineer, he will

provide you a structural report

and a 12-year plan that no-one

will ever implement. Take the

hand of a priest, to learn how

your inborn flaws led to this

state. Or look for a salesman,

to cover over the cracks

with plaster and tapestries and

resale values.

 

Let an architect redesign you,

or an agronomist, regrow you.

Let the naturalist rediscover

the wild parts still left in you.

Let the museum curator place

you carefully on a pedestal,

hermetically sealed

and pressurized against moral

ambiguity and decay. Marry a

doctor, he will tell you how to

delay the disintegration of

clay into dust. Marry the artist

to copy you onto the wall, or

the lawyer who will align you

with all of today’s limitations

and statutes regarding

brokenness.

 

Ahhh but let a poet love you-

and you will be seen, your cracks

lovingly caressed under hands

that seek neither to replace or

repair. Like Cohen, the poet

will tell you- this is how the light

gets in; he will collect the lost

and scattered pieces where

they fell in all your lifetimes.

 

Like the Japanese custom, he

will fill your breaking points

with gold and declare you

greater than the sum of the

assembled parts. Most likely,

he will then set you back into

the world, afterwards- a little

wiser, a little stronger, a lot

more cynical but also more

tender. And only then, after

having been known so well by

the verse writer, can you go

and marry the stranger.

 

Reviews

[Ellen Hammond]

Wow! Great imagery! I can relate so much of this poem to various relationships I've had in my lifetime, except, my glazier was more of a glacier.

[Marie Anzalone]

I wrote this for my poet friend Joaquin :)