William Leo Coakley
Five Short Poems
The Course of My Life
—for Eric Rhein
As my first leaf turned black,
I feared it was early decay,
But I rose into my darkness,
My ebony elegance,
Now I am all leaves,
Unafraid to continue to grow.
In Washington, Walt Whitman Walks Out of Hide/Seek
I too saw ants and worse
Crawl on the dead, on suffering man.
Once I held a young god in my arms
In his last hour, whispered in his sweet ear
“Stay with me, we will live forever.”
Now they drive us out—I know their kind.
Brother, it’s you I’m with. Did they think I’d stay
To watch you die again on their blank wall?
Night Letter
—To the memory of Ari Darom, dancer of pure energy and Dionysian promise, born 12 March 1943, died at the year’s turning, 1983
Ah my dark bird, your arms poised in flowering flight,
Is it you sunk to this cage of little bones
Dancing, white, white, white in the pure, cold, waters?
Liberation
—To the memory of Alastair Kerr
Sweet sir, sweet fairy, is there no man left, no god, to trust?–
We have woven you a martyr’s shroud with the threads of love and lust.
When the last death is counted, when the young men know no temptation,
Lead them through the burnt-out houses to rebuild our liberation.
Those who died for our sins
visit me still in the night,
their wasted faces holding death back,
their eyes too far gone to accuse me.
Or they dance before me in their own selves
so beautiful the darkness is worn down
like the steps to the old tower
that shine to lead us upwards again.
The poems of William Leo Coakley have appeared in Paris Review, London Magazine, The Nation, New American Review, and Poetry Review (London), among other journals and anthologies. His poem “Horses Burning” won a Sotheby’s International Poetry Competition Prize. He won the 2013 Der Hovanessian Prize from the New England Poetry Club for his translation of a poem by Constantin Cavafy. Coakley’s Helikon Press published many important volumes of poetry, including Thom Gunn’s Talbot Road in 1981.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s series of five short poems includes poems in memory of a person lost to AIDS. Write a poem in memory of a person lost to AIDS. This can be someone you knew personally, or a public figure who meant a lot to you.