on borders, and poetry

April is National Poetry Month. As I did last year, each day in April I will post a new [as yet unposted by me] poem from a different poet. Today there will be two, since yesterday got away from me somehow.

The first is from Basque poet Kirmen Uribe (watch a film clip here--and consider yourself deprived if you've never heard Basque music!) It is part of his poem "Evil Spirits," from his book, Meanwhile, Take My Hand.

This morning I consider the sheets on my bed.
Your smell rises from them, they show signs of you.
Traces of your soul.

Whether it was evil or good I don't know.
And so, repeating the olden rites with care,
I put on the music we heard last night
and slip by slow degrees into bed.
I hug the sheets to myself,
stroke their finish,
and bring fresh to mind, one by one,
every single moment of this past night.

I've had knowledge of your soul.

---

The second poem is by Michigan native Bob Hicok. It is from his book, This Clumsy Living, and is an excerpt from a poem called "My faith-based initiative."

Sometimes when I touch my wife, I am overcome, I want
to bite her, want no edge, no border between us, I shake.

Is this how you want me to pray, Lord, what if everything
we do is love, every horrible thing we do is love,
and the tiny gestures of notes beside the phone,
and blowing on soup, what if there are no distinctions,
and we, who are nothing but the impulse to distinguish,
to cut one thing from another, are wrong,
if we should have stopped after one word, one sound,
the sigh of breath when making love, of one body
pushing into another, forcing air out, I don't know
if the tongue of that sound is all I can say, Lord,
don't know why my hands are still moving, are these keys
touching you, Lord, are my fingerprints on your skin?