ARS Poetica

By Stephen Dunn

I'd come to understand restraint

is worthless unless

something's about to spill or burst.

and that the Commandments

understand us perfectly, a large No

for the desirability of everything

vengeful, delicious, out of reach.

I wanted to write ten things

that contained as much.

Maybe from the beginning

the issue was how to live

in a world so extravagant

it had sky,

in bodies so breakable

we had to pray.

I welcomed, though,

our celestial freedom, our promiscuous flights

all returning to earth.

Yet what could awe us now?

The feeling dies

and then the word.

Restraint. Extravagance. I liked

how one could unshackle the other,

that they might become indivisible.

Astaire's restraint was a kind of extravagance,

While Ginger Rogers danced backwards

in high heels and continued to smile!

She had such grace it was unfair

we couldn't keep our eyes off him,

but the beautiful is always unfair.

I found myself imagining him

gone wild, gyrating, leaping,

his life suddenly uncontainable.

Oh, even as he thrashed,

I could tell he was feeling

for limits, and what he could bear.