ecafehcuod ([personal profile] ecafehcuod) wrote in [community profile] findthatbook2020-02-16 04:10 pm

Poem or Book that I found in a thrift shop in Brooklyn NY

IV

For My Wife



Leafing through these pages, as I do now,

finding our legend in a ghostly phrase —

to Lillian—thinking of coming days

when readers read as I do: —knowing how



the love, the thought, the kiss, the worless vow

that holds us each to each in speechless ways

is lost already in this wordy maze

where we are only what cold words allow—



I say it's all unsaid and lasts nowhere.

And so we talk ourselves to double death

to live and die in lifeless words again,



shadows of shadows, even now bare

of everything but our abiding faith

to live in others, as I in Lillian.

https://imgur.com/gallery/vN4mm7a picture of the page
quillori: man reading (from the Haft Awrang) (theme: books (haft awrang))

[personal profile] quillori 2020-02-16 10:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it may be from Sonnets of Love and Liberty by Walter Lowenfels (published by Blue Heron Press in 1955). Quite an interesting guy - check out his wikipedia article.

(Anonymous) 2020-05-18 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
Walter Lowenfels, "Sonnets of Love and Liberty"!