David Adès
Searching for the Unified Theory of You
Seduced by beauty, outward appearance,
I fall to your body’s lure,
try to find you in lovemaking,
try to find you in desire,
in limbs’ urgent undertakings.
You understand my flaws,
my body’s need, how easily
I can be deflected
from the constant search,
if only for a time.
I go back to the puzzle, try again
to find the elegant equation
that will illuminate every hidden thing,
peering through microscopes
in one failed experiment after another,
finding feints and firewalls,
fading footprints, deliberate
decoys, static and murk,
all grist to incomprehension.
I push up against barriers,
against the elusive unknowable,
with theories and hypotheses
small comfort, no bulwark
against the frustration of failure,
knowing you will resist me always,
with beauty your ally.
Still Searching for the Unified Theory of You
Perhaps I Was Mistaken Again
Perhaps I was mistaken again
in thinking something was other than it was,
the way a heart is prone to name as love
what is not love at all, the way shadows
seem to take on shapes the mind imagines.
In giving something a name, sometimes
we name not what it is but what our
temperaments incline towards
and then, once named, fix it in place
whether it belongs or not.
Is it obduracy or blindness
that constitutes our failure to see
the true nature of a thing?
Today, as my listing heart,
buffeted by waves, glimpsed
the dark sky above, so distant
it might vanish altogether,
I saw from a distance a woman
who brought me into her fold,
who made me feel welcome,
who came as a blessing,
whom I named as friend.
My attention turned elsewhere
and when I looked again
she had vanished, as the thing
I named friendship had vanished,
without warning and for no known
reason, by retreat and absence,
as if some mysterious weave
of lives linking us had unraveled
of its own accord leaving behind
the shadow of friendship
or whatever else the mind imagined
that was not what it was thought to be
but was sadly misnamed
and I, perhaps, was mistaken again.
David Adès is a Pushcart Prize nominated Australian poet currently living in Pittsburgh. He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His collection Mapping the World (Wakefield Press / Friendly Street Poets) was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. A chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing), was published in 2015. His poems have been widely published in Australia and the U.S. In 2014 he won the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
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Searching for the Unified Theory of You
Seduced by beauty, outward appearance,
I fall to your body’s lure,
try to find you in lovemaking,
try to find you in desire,
in limbs’ urgent undertakings.
You understand my flaws,
my body’s need, how easily
I can be deflected
from the constant search,
if only for a time.
I go back to the puzzle, try again
to find the elegant equation
that will illuminate every hidden thing,
peering through microscopes
in one failed experiment after another,
finding feints and firewalls,
fading footprints, deliberate
decoys, static and murk,
all grist to incomprehension.
I push up against barriers,
against the elusive unknowable,
with theories and hypotheses
small comfort, no bulwark
against the frustration of failure,
knowing you will resist me always,
with beauty your ally.
Still Searching for the Unified Theory of You
Still searching
for
the unified theory
of you
I brushed
your lips
with mine
tried that clichéd equation
placed my pulsing heart in your hands
studied the lovely sky of your face
its winds its storms
its ever-changing
unknowable world
still searching for the
unified theory of you
my lips brushed yours
an incomplete equation
you held my pulsing heart
in your hands
the weather of your lovely face
full of winds full of storms
an always changing
unreachable world
still searching for
the unified
theory of you
our lips brushed
the equation almost
your hands held
my pulsing heart
your stormy face so lovely
your windy sky
ever-changing unknowable
unreachable still
Perhaps I Was Mistaken Again
Perhaps I was mistaken again
in thinking something was other than it was,
the way a heart is prone to name as love
what is not love at all, the way shadows
seem to take on shapes the mind imagines.
In giving something a name, sometimes
we name not what it is but what our
temperaments incline towards
and then, once named, fix it in place
whether it belongs or not.
Is it obduracy or blindness
that constitutes our failure to see
the true nature of a thing?
Today, as my listing heart,
buffeted by waves, glimpsed
the dark sky above, so distant
it might vanish altogether,
I saw from a distance a woman
who brought me into her fold,
who made me feel welcome,
who came as a blessing,
whom I named as friend.
My attention turned elsewhere
and when I looked again
she had vanished, as the thing
I named friendship had vanished,
without warning and for no known
reason, by retreat and absence,
as if some mysterious weave
of lives linking us had unraveled
of its own accord leaving behind
the shadow of friendship
or whatever else the mind imagined
that was not what it was thought to be
but was sadly misnamed
and I, perhaps, was mistaken again.
David Adès is a Pushcart Prize nominated Australian poet currently living in Pittsburgh. He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His collection Mapping the World (Wakefield Press / Friendly Street Poets) was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. A chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing), was published in 2015. His poems have been widely published in Australia and the U.S. In 2014 he won the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.