back to Poems Listen  

 

Bury your money


Now, there:      there’s the money.

Great captivities tap
in our sleep.

But we made a promise      God and us
to meet in another life
when we both could want it.
If only one of us wanted, that
wouldn’t be enough.
We made a promise to be naked
—though great famines bury the ear
and the mouth,
though captivities cut parts away, or swell,
or sap them,
we made a promise to be naked,
John Cage said
Music is permanent,
only listening is intermittent.