Barefoot

Kevin Hart

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780268103163
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Barefoot is Kevin Hart's eighth collection of poems; it is rich in elegies, meditations on lost love, and celebrations of new love. The title speaks of mourning, pilgrimage, and the direct sensuous contact of flesh with earth. Harold Bloom has long extolled Hart as a "visionary of desire, " and in this collection we find that vision deepened and that desire extended. Never before has Hart stretched his range of inspiration quite so far; while continuing to draw from Christianity, he also responds to the rich heritage of American Blues, and reveals a wit as sharp as a razor's edge. The poetry is at once religious poetry and love poetry; indeed, the "religious poetry" is itself love poetry. Always, Hart speaks to us in words that seem inevitable in their simplicity. As he himself has written, "The best conductor of mystery is clarity. The true bearer of complexity is simplicity." Barefoot will delight poetry lovers everywhere.

5

LITTLE SONG BOOK

It is your hand I love

Alive upon your knee

Only your naked hand

(It runs right up your neck

When we are deep in talk)

A hand with fingers stretched

And roughing up your hair

It makes you naked too

(Your fingertips will sleep

Upon my thigh tonight)

I think your hands in talk

Fashion something small

Invisible and wild

(But death can see it well

And quietly leaves the room)

I want to kiss you, love,

Under the monkey puzzle tree

Where no one ever goes

(The branches hardly move an inch,

Light bows to enter there)

But it’s a puzzle, love,

To get you to that sleepy tree

When you just want to read

(I run a finger down your thigh,

My shadow blacks your page)

How cool it is there, love,

Under the monkey puzzle tree,

How good to taste its seed

(I feel the fine bones in your hand

While walking over there)

At night the only words I want to say

Are those already tempered by our love:

Bold words that venture high upon my tongue

When it is somewhere lost inside your mouth

Words that I whisper deep between your thighs

Words flying fast into wet darkness there

Fine words all shining through the palest breath

When I’ve lived twice or thrice within your kiss

Small words that blossom only close to hush

Or leap out through the dark in sudden cries

Old words that go to bed with us each night

Young words that taste of morning light and you

We love those liquid August days so much:

They cling like cotton shirts all limp with sweat.

September comes, and then we miss their touch.

We miss the fleshy thunderstorm’s vague threat,

Thin girls who taste of Beaujolais at night:

They cling like cotton shirts all limp with sweat,

Though morning sees them gone, as well it might.

Summer restrings our days and plays them slow

With girls who taste of Beaujolais at night,

Who whisper thickly that they love you so,

Like Blues sung soft and sweet out in the dark.

Summer restrings our days and plays them slow

On yellow afternoons lost in a park . . .

I knew a girl whose very smile was wine,

Was Blues sung soft and sweet out in the dark;

She left one day without a single line.

We love those liquid August days so much:

They give us girls whose very smiles are wine.

September comes, and then we miss their touch.

So Sorrow bums his way right into town,

So Sorrow comes our way with rusty crown;

It’s down oh down, my dear, it’s always down.

He’s got our faces fixed in his blank look,

He’s got our names clean written in his book,

He’s got our Queen, our Knight, he’s got our Rook.

You said you loved me, and you told a lie,

But, girlfrie...