Cannon, loose

   ..

                     But it's the having

   not the keeping that is the treasure.

   Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon

   and said he was giving up poetry

   because it told lies, that language distorts.

   I agreed, but asked what we have

   that gets it right even that much.

   We look up at the stars and they are

   not there. We see the memory

   of when they were, once upon a time.

   And that too is more than enough.

Jack Gilbert

Refusing Heaven

  The Lost Hotels

  of Paris
  [fragment]

Knopf, 2005©