How I Read Gertrude Stein
—for Joseph Kepecs
The poem is not the heart’s cry
(Though it seems to be if you have craft enough)
The poem is made to carry the heart’s cry
And only to carry it. And the cry is always the
Same . . . for all times and every place the
Same perceptions met a hundred times, or once.
The rest is exuberance.
The force left over after dealing with
An undemanding planet in a square time . . .
No more or less mysterious than the juicing
Of the glands. The need to skip a stone
Across that pond. To yell among high mountains.
You think you read for the heart’s cry
But you do not. You read because no stone
Ever skips perfectly. Because that mountain
Always lets you down. Because no matter
How you yell the voice bounced back
Is flat. The words are puny.
The need for another world that always works right
Is the heart’s exuberance.
We don’t hide there. We spill over and
Make it.
by Lew Welch
from Ring of Bone
Grey Fox Press, 1960
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