The Ancient Modern
It Hasn’t Seen/ Joshua Alan Sturgill
I leap up now and seize the pen.
It’s been an age since I wanted to write.
Poised above the page, silent, in an empty room
— the preparations made, waiting even for a splash
of inspiration — lonely, even in the company
of imagination, the mind’s cinematograph. That’s the trouble
with imagination. It goes on always suggesting, suggesting, but never
opening a door to what it hasn’t seen. I leap up now! There
the Form and there the Words! From which heaven
comes the rhythm rocketing through me?
I want to speak the unseen;
I want to craft and answer mysteries,
to articulate the thousand postcards glittering in my mouth.
Exhausted by images and suggestions, I want ziggurats
of meaning, meaning leading up by hewn-stone stairs
to well-fed gods.
Now I leap!
Now I seize the pen!
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