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Of Poetry
by Peter Boyle
Of Poetry - Peter Boyle
Of Poetry
Great poems are often extraordinarily simple.
They carry their openness
with both hands.
If there is a metaphor lounging in a doorway
they step briskly past.
The boom of generals
and presidents with their rhetoric manuals
will go on sowing the wind.
The great poems are distrustful of speech.
Quietly,
like someone very old
who has only a few hours left of human time,
they gaze into the faces around them –
one by one
they kiss love into our mouths.
from The Transformation Boat (River Road Press, 2008), Peter Boyle 2008, used by permission of the author and River Road Press