Hooded

Each poem pants for closure; each poem
Begs to end, but the composer
Is not an executioner.

So a poem goes on a little
Longer for the poet’s pleasure
Amid the suffering of poems.

The phrases turn to each other.
Who will bring us to conclusion,
End our whimpering with a bang?

But phrases are prefab, borrowed
Cowards, in the main. The rarer,
Braver phrases want another

Turn in any event. Readers
May abandon poems whenever
And get on with actual life,

But that will compel exactly
Nothing. The executioner
Of a poem is not death, is not

The end. The executioner
Of a poem is just the terror
Of words at what must be said next.