Elegy to the Spanish Republic

The poetry he liked the most

Was the poetry of titles

Picked by artists and musicians

For paintings and compositions,

Songs, sculptures, etudes, what-have-you,

For any art mostly wordless

Or entirely wordless, except

For the effort to title it.

The beauty of such poetry

Is that, whatever’s been titled

Has no responsibility

To hew close to connotations

Suggested by that single phrase

Or word or line—you can listen

For the sea surging in La Mer,

But it’s not necessary, and

When Liszt names a piano piece

Years of Pilgrimage, you can’t be

Disappointed by the absence

Of any stories or haunting

Descriptions of far-off places.

Paintings, too, may have lyrical

Names orthogonal to the art.

He collected these, secretly,

And shared them with no one, hoarding

The sense of freedom they gave him,

That it could be permissible

To invoke a vague atmosphere,

Which any further poetry

Could only dissipate, then split.