Spring 2010, Volume 8

Poetry by Barry Spacks

But for the Lovers

“Poetry’s a seductive, love-haunted game.”
That’s what he told the distracted student-body.
The students hardly heard him, they dreamed of a body,
a lover’s body who’d play their body’s game.

“But for the lovers,” Dylan Thomas would speak,
For those lost in each other, who pay no attention
To words, for how could words earn their attention
When eloquent glances and kisses more sweetly speak?

O, hopeful swains, O teasing, sultry misses,
Who will deny you make the wiser choice?
No argument from poets, their game of choice
Is also love; they cherish even near-misses,

Lamented almost-communions...and, eyes to eyes,
The great loves of a life: the laughing, the touching,
The shopping for food, the gifts, the poems, so touching:
The brightening eyes...the melting, closing eyes.

 

 

 

 

BIO: Barry Spacks earns his keep as a professor of writing and literature at UC Santa Barbara, California, after many years of teaching at M.I.T. He’s published poems widely in journals paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, ten poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work.