by anna yin

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• Literary (Genre) Romance
• Literary (Length) Short (under 1000 words)

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this poem and interview were posted on the Toronto Quarterly http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.ca/2013/07/anna-yin-inhaling-silence-interview.html

For Irving Layton

After so many years,
do you still believe
Poetry merely exists for showing the dark of our soul?

Would you write love poems differently today
after your last woman left you
(many of them vanished without a name)?
Would you regret that nothing remained
behind the rugged and dark sex?

Mr. Layton, I try to picture you
a cold face with bold eyes.
But I always end my painting
with mixed blue, red and white.

I want to believe
all these are in your veins
and your impulses.
I long to show you the opposite:
Before poetry found me,
I was nearly drowned in dark.

from my book "Inhaling the Silence" (Mosaic Press 2013)

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