Lunette 32

Each of us, you said, is many people,
           and yes, I understand, I know, I said,
and the loneliness continued. Yes, true,
           the many as one long for liberation,
if not love’s refusal to obscure them.
           But just then the plural of I as we
felt imprecise, however well-intentioned.
           It pulls an inner multitude farther
from others and talks therefore to no one.
            I too have been a soul without center.
I wandered a path consoled by the trees
            who thought so little of my brokenness.
And yes, I too fear the monolithic
           who tells the world of its horrible damage,
and then he breaks it. Into many, plus one.
            When I see a gallery of faces
acting in unison, it makes me anxious.
           Truth is, I long to hear your voice.
I tell you this. And then I draw the curtain
           of a booth where, on the ballot this year,
you can color the boxes with your hope inside.

Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism, Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.