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A poem inspired by a line from a poem in the Book of Mercy. I am grateful in advance for any constructive criticism you may have to offer. Thank you.

Let me not pretend you stand beside me.
You are a field of wildflowers
lending your fragrance to the passing wind.
You can never walk beside me, but I
can lay upon your vast body
& dream the human shape
I long for you to take.

Let me not pretend that I am worthy
of the blossom-crown your scent has set
upon the weight of memory.
I cannot conjure you into flesh
with all the strength of my imperfect will.
I could count your every petal
& never know the number of stars
holding up the sky.

Let me not pretend that I do not envy
the thousand decayed corpses
of mice & grass & moss & lichen,
in which you are rooted
& from which you draw your life.

Let me not pretend, beloved,
that I could ever be your master.


(c) 2010, Siobhan Menge

Hello Siobhan (lovely name)

Having no qualifications as a critic (and no desire to be one), I can only say that your poem gave me goosebumps of appreciation – the first stanza in particular. So I dug a little deeper, and found some of your - relatively few - older posts. This one, in reference to your poem The Letter, resonated:

I think that, on the surface, it is a letter to our friend L, though not a letter from me, Siobhan; rather a letter from the energy-being he speaks of so often, "And though she is all women, she has a particular form... Perhaps this is a letter from my Anima to my Animus. "

It's often said, here on the Forum and elsewhere, that Leonard's poetry is mostly about love of god and/or love of a woman, and that the two are intertwined. But a little voice keeps insisting that many times, he's writing about his Muse; not a real life, human one, rather the elusive creative spirit which, for Leonard, is female; this I believe. I follow the BOM threads (unqualified there too ) and sometimes I really want to say, no no no, he means the creative spirit, not god, then I realize, perhaps they are one and the same.

Hi imaginary friend! Thanks for responding.

imaginary friend wrote:
a little voice keeps insisting that many times, he's writing about his Muse; not a real life, human one, rather the elusive creative spirit which, for Leonard, is female; this I believe. I follow the BOM threads (unqualified there too ) and sometimes I really want to say, no no no, he means the creative spirit, not god, then I realize, perhaps they are one and the same.

Yes, yes, yes ! I am so with you on this. I have always felt that he's speaking of his Muse, primarily. I also believe that the creative spirit is the same as g~d. Somewhere in the Book of Longing is "worship me in the forms which remind you of me." which I think is the voice of G~d, as expressed through his Muse. I got the feeling (first when reading Death of a Lady's Man) that the Muse is a shape G~d chooses to take due to its compelling nature, & that his Muse was speaking to him in moments of beauty shared with particular women. I felt like he was following her from the window-eyes of one great Love to the next.

I think he longed for her to be a real human woman for a long time. I wonder if part of his struggle was the sense of separation from Her, his Muse, & the conviction that he could find her in a human form. This is not a well-formed idea by any means. Perhaps you can take it a step further ?

A pleasure to meet you,
Siobhan