for no real poem has a first line <br />any more than a real book <br />has a first page <br /> <br />it comes out of a dark lost forest <br />or a bright unknowing cloud <br /> <br />or an unbearable pain <br />so unbearable that even <br />if you wrote the poem on a piece of paper <br />and threw the paper away <br />it would ease the pain <br /> <br />or a childhood so miserable <br />that only a complete change of life <br />could recognise one single beautiful thought <br /> <br />or an astonishing moment <br />when you knelt and prayed <br />for the first time in your life <br />to a god you did not know <br />with words you did not understand <br />for they were not even words <br /> <br />or the moment when all the horror of the world <br />faced all the love and beauty in the world <br />and both were so taken aback <br />that they could only embrace <br />and later, speak <br /> <br />or a nowhere and a nothing <br />so stark that only poetry <br /> <br />without a first line<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-without-a-first-line/
