The world is all that is just in case of emergency
Having no good guidebook and feeling
Compelled to listen to everybody else's f**ing
Advice, directions, and predictions, suddenly
We had to lie down and make the children
The horizon. As if on our d**hbed we
Had to choose whether or not to believe in
The Maker once and for all. Because it said so
Right there in the Koran: If you turn away from God
He will simply replace you with other people
But we had been taught since childhood that
We were special and irreplaceable
And it said so right there in the Bible:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself
But now we were beside ourselves. For a long time
Afterward we argued. Or at least as far
Back as we can remember. Everything before
That is black in the mind and now white
On this page. But don't be deceived:
Letters aren't grave markers.
Over our fears, which are not many but deep
We've tried to live the children's lives
Through love, and they've tried to give us
More of their lives by screaming
At each other. This is to be expected
From making the same motion with
Fingers, tiptoeing, if you will, sometimes
Banging bodies with plastic keys
Were it not for the plastic of life, we
Might all perish in a parish of puns
And morbid thought. But thought once
Thought is no longer elastic. Confused?
God does not clarify; we exist.
Which brings us to a conclusion
Having nothing to do with us: We
Have deliberated long and hard about
Writing an introductory essay to a book
You don't hold in your hands right now,
In which we're disgusted by the problems of art
And children and art and politics
And art and war and art
And an*l s**; but in the end, which is not
The conclusion of anything until we pa**
Away from the memories of
Our mothers and into the children,
We decided an introduction would be
Tantamount to confessing to a crime
One has yet to commit
If there are errors, therefore, in the work
Before you—things you don't like
Or things you like but not in word-form
Or things you don't believe are really
Things at all—we blame them on the children
Just as you blame them on us. For we didn't
Plan on writing this book. We didn't
Intend to provoke a lot of bad feelings in
Its reader. We weren't even thinking about
War or fear or safety or courage. We know
That you can get those things elsewhere
That in other arts, say, at the movies,
You can be moved to small tears or that
Say, at the symphony you can fall
Asleep gently and unnoticed. After all, what's
A little book of poems going to do
For you? We wrote the following words
Because they made us happy at times
And at other times they made us sad
And then rhyme like a**holes.
Don't think that we had a good time
Writing this. Don't think that we had
A bad time either. We simply had time, and that's
Probably a greater sin. For you
Can plainly see, we are not one.
But we are not two either. We is this third thing
Between us: the dil*o or the children
I love you, Wife says to Husband
Now lock the door
The children love you, Reader/Reaper,
Because there's no one left to adore
I love you rhymes with Let me go,
Or so say the children of dead heroes.