Hearing from You

by A. F. Moritz

O my belovèd monster, I can’t say
that when I first saw you I was stricken
and filled with fear, or astonishment,
or horror and disgust, or awe
at immensity, beauty—that these things were real
and did exist somewhere and were greater
than I was ever told,
had ever dreamed. I was only shocked
so much that I was nothing but the shock. I was a splinter
flying in the explosion of your coming.
A streak of that fire. Flying
from you, a part of you. Then I lay
on the ground later
and recalled, after a long or short not knowing
anything, that I am you. Still in this quiet
motionlessness, where the birds, to my stunned awakening,
are brighter and sweeter, fluttering,
whispering, as soon I too will again
start doing, I am being
thrown here from you.

A. F. Moritz

A. F. Moritz’s most recent books of poems are The Garden: A Poem and an Essay (Gordon Hill, 2021), As Far As You Know (House of Anansi, 2020), and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (House of Anansi, 2018), as well as a new edition of poems in Greek translation (Vakxikon, 2021) taken from The Sparrow. He is presently the Poet Laureate of Toronto.