I speak to you like many rivers
Emptying from the heart
This is I know unattractive in a man
Yet when I speak to you in a dialect like wire
Those uneasy words meant to weaken the knees
You will know there’s nothing left to abstract
That’s not like an idea both vague & elemental
As in say the idea of us which is so
Like the conjugation of rivers
Simply at the heart of the matter
These beds of stone & shale giving up giving
Way to every senseless & untimely current
Of the wild convicted flesh
Many Rivers
David St. John is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose and the coeditor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of the New Poem. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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