Tear It Down in  General   

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

By Jack Gilbert

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Other poems by Jack Gilbert:

• Divorce
• In Dispraise Of Poetry
• In Umbria
• Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying
• Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer
• Rain
• Recovering Amid The Farms
• Searching For Pittsburgh
• Tear It Down
• The Abnormal Is Not Courage
• The Great Fires