The brides have passed all of the sentence tests
that Polyhymnia wanted. She asked
them to teach us how the earth became
a sullen crib. She thought the brides should sing
of nightmares and miracles, not freedoms.
If we have come to know our strengths, she said,
then perhaps we have come to love our failures
too much. Write it. This is a test.
*If Polyhymnia, then nothing is transitory,
just the vast ebbing out of what always flows away.
As Polyhymnia is, there is no sentence here,
just the quiet susurration in her lips.
Of Polyhymnia, her stone lips breathe silence,
for espousal has always been a poem to awake to.
For ancient, aimless, almost airless Polyhymnia,
the courtier of our language,
the world is made up for us. Always.*
© Jim Kleinhenz