by Michael Kiesow Moore

I want to build a song sturdy as a castle

with rooms—it must have rooms!

A room that can hold Lorca’s full moon rising,

a room for Whitman’s calamus leaves, fecund and green,

a room vast enough to hold the rage of Achilles

and another to hold the fall of Troy –

and we can give Wilfred Owen that room for it will

be large enough to hold, too, the pity of war.

Once we fill all these rooms, can we finally

find room enough for love?

First we must find the lost key

dropped so many times it is a wonder it

has any form at all, or held so fast by

some it can only be removed by the

white nimble fingers of Death.

Let us then make prodigious rooms for love

and hand out the keys prolifically

to all who deserve one and more so

to the ones who do not – for is this not

a love song, like all the songs?

And when we finish building this great

edifice it will beat in the deep heart

of this cold cold world and the song will

suffuse every living being

and you will be held

all manner of living beings will be held

and no one will ever be alone again.

Published in The Song Castle (Nodin Press), 2019