John Wieners

 Artwork by Figgy Guyter

   — ‘From A Poem for Painters’ Pt. 7

At last. I come to the last defense.

My poems contain no
                  wilde beestes, no
lady of the lake music
of the spheres, or organ chants,

yet by these lines
I betray what little given me.

One needs no defense.

                  Only the score of a man’s
                  struggle to stay with
what is his own, what
lies within him to do.

Without which is nothing,
for him or those who hear him
And I come to this,
knowing the waste, leaving

the rest up to love
and its twisted faces,
my hands claw out at
only to draw back from the
blood already running there.

Oh come back, whatever heart
you have left. It is my life
you save. The poem is done.