Art & Letters Magazine Editor Shares Poem Of His Own
By Ben Mazer for Boston Compass (#122)
April 30, 2020
This piece originally appeared in Viscous Verses, a monthly poetry column in the Boston Compass Newspaper edited by Art & Letters Magazine
It rains. One steps up through the haze
of tan and violet to the maze
of memory--misty where one stands,
twisting, separating strands.
The hour's dim, and no one calls;
obligation mutely falls
through floors of mountains, origin:
anonymously you begin.
The blasted lantern of the nerves
lights up the sky, where starlight curves;
below, on earth, some few pass by
sheer constructs of identity.
They swirl and plaster every sense,
unto a law of difference:
not clear how long, or what direction,
subsume the nerves in their inspection.
The skeleton's examination
evokes, incites, brief procreation:
filed away, some future date
astonished memories locate.
The seraphs of pedestrians
seep into violets, into tans,
breaching desire's boulevards;
throw down the last of evening's cards.
There is no way to formulate
identity's raw nervous state:
it seems to slip into the world,
by stellar facts and atoms hurled
into the mythic stratosphere.
Ideas formulate the seer.
Genesis sans génération.
A change of trains at London station.
—Ben Mazer.