For myself
I like a pile of sorrow
Thought on a promontory
Tended in nightshade
Monastic and gilt
On cloistered walls
Tapestries aged over
Belladonna ardor
In misericords
Of cantinas
Where scholar-faced
Liars drink.
Moonlit night-
Fall pied jonquil
Or narcissus
Begs luminance
Of plastic lilies
In potter’s field.
At least there
Is something
A little to oppose
Impose suppose
We love them back
Whose mad blossoms
Contradict
The colossal self
Of containment.
Who hold these
Words to atonement
At this altar
Married here
A fatal deftness
For the faint sublime.
Copyright © 2017 by Glenn Mott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 8, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.