Everything Is Not Enough
Jim Moore
When the dictator comes, he will be freely elected.
Rereading Tsvetaeva.
She lived through her own plague years.
Did not actually live through them.
Hanged herself. Her desperation.
And yet she wrote
“moonlight through the attic window–
/that’s how far our banquet reaches.”
Her passion was all she had.
It was everything
and, yet, it was not enough.
I will still walk,
after the dictator is elected,
with my friend each Friday
along the abandoned railroad tracks.
Sometimes we will even laugh.
Tsvetaeva is writing about November.
Rain falls. Fog.
“Love’s cross is heavy. We won’t try to lift it.”
Photo: JoAnn Verburg
Jim Moore‘s most recent book of poetry, PROGNOSIS, was published in 2021 by Graywolf Press. He lives in Minneapolis and Spoleto, Italy with his wife the photographer, JoAnn Verburg.
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