This World

You can never have enough of this world,
its peaches, their taste so sudden a sitting man
stands, the kind hands of dusk, the boulders along the highway,
great blooms of time; you can never have enough
of wakening in a bed beside a woman you love,
her body fragrant with itself, and the nasturtium out the window
holding the dew, the sweet water of dawn,
in their frail green bowls; you can never have enough
of the poet in the prison infirmary
looking out every window just to find one single tree,
nor enough of the night-fisherman’s net dragging in stars,
the dark veils of tadpoles swimming in the ditch,
the dog sleeping in the shade of the mule,
the mule sleeping as the afternoon cools,
the boy kissing the girl’s breasts behind the water tank;
you can never have enough of this world …
and yet how we tire of it, how we raise our hand against it,
how we avoid it, as if it were a mother saying,
Look me in the eye. Just look me in the eye.