Exceptions and Melancholies- Ralph Angel

[romanticxnight.livejournal.com]

Never before
had we been so thin and so clear 
and arranged always
and in the same way gazing and listening 
over the rooftops
to tin cans of flowers and strange 
music. For an hour or more 
I turned the same corner
and felt like a criminal farther and farther out to sea
among the racks of shoes and old clothes 
but now looking
back I should never have 
unpacked. A street
crowned with chestnut trees
ends at the sewer. You go to a theatre 
and find yourself a house 
outside the city
and walk the shore 
forever. I don't have much
talent for poetry. When I see a wrecking ball 
dangling from a crane I mean it 
literally. I mean
I don't mean the world's fallen apart 
or that a wrecking ball
symbolizes the eye my world-weary sister 
couldn't know to turn away 
from. The hospital's
exhausted. The little church is boarded up. 
We leaned against the limestone 
and liked the fact that tea 
sweetens gradually
and that the wildflowers
beneath the shade of trees gone shivering 
have really livened up the cemetery 
and that the tall grass and the garbage 
and especially the piled-up 
newspapers and the rooftop pool 
fit right in among
these windowless buildings 
having gathered
as we are in the flesh again 
and leading another life 
altogether.

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I'm looking for any poems you might have about love in the face of adversity, particularly about love surviving despite others' predictions that it won't. Thanks in advance :)