(Reina Loveful/Unsplash)

I saw a rose tree high as the cypresses
In a place Pomponius or Saturus had torn
Violets all over the grass

The rose tree was the brilliant, never-
Written book I ruined
My neck sniffing the attar of

The violets were the witty titles
That had flashed over my brain
Like insights lighting into the very
Heart of pain

Where I might have written Love

Danielle Chapman is a poet and essayist. Her collection of poems, Delinquent Palaces, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2015. Her poems have appeared in the Atlantic and the New Yorker, and her essays can be found in the Oxford American and Poetry. She teaches literature and creative writing at Yale.

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Published in the May 2021 issue: View Contents
Topics
Poetry
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