ORANGE BLOSSOM

[Avro Pärt] took a pen out of his pocket and put it in front of me, as if that would explain everything. ‘Schubert’s pen,’ he said, ‘was fifty per cent ink, fifty percent tears.’

1

What would our lives be like if such things were possible?
If pens wrote with tears and when you kissed your lover
You tasted a mouth full of orange blossom.

How different the world would be if when you made love
The bed was surf and foam, salt and spray.
What if you could compare her to a summer day?
But the world is not castanets, falling stars, blood oranges.
It is fissures and cracks and things that snap in your hands.

2

The man who strangles
The woman who stabs
The child who wanders into traffic
Why do we insist such acts are inexplicable?
(Unkind, yes, inexplicable, no.)

Why do we lie to each other?

Because we know, know too well
We will never write with a pen that’s fifty per cent ink
Fifty percent tears
And will never, ever,
Not if we live to be a 100
Be kissed by a mouth full of orange blossom.