Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
-W.B. Yeats, "The Coming Of
Wisdom With Time"
How many drafts
does it take
for a wild poem to atrophy
into its spare and abiding truth?
How many
barely differing iterations
for its flashy lines to stiffen
and darken,
for its wettest words to dry, its dazzling
images to soften
into such well-defined textures
and restrained colors
that any artistically-inclined
eye in the future
could easily reproduce them, as if
painting by-numbers?
How many nights
to name
the full moon titanium-
or maybe dove-white
such that,
in the mind of a person
whom I don't even know
that I love yet, it never wanes;
or to define the morning
light which streams
through my window simply
as yellow ochre—
and, perfectly satisfied
with the very certain kind of longing
I've conveyed, just turn away
and leave it at that?
