Michael Shepherd - ! poem without a first line

for no real poem has a first line
any more than a real book
has a first page

it comes out of a dark lost forest
or a bright unknowing cloud

or an unbearable pain
so unbearable that even
if you wrote the poem on a piece of paper
and threw the paper away
it would ease the pain

or a childhood so miserable
that only a complete change of life
could recognise one single beautiful thought

or an astonishing moment
when you knelt and prayed
for the first time in your life
to a god you did not know
with words you did not understand
for they were not even words

or the moment when all the horror of the world
faced all the love and beauty in the world
and both were so taken aback
that they could only embrace
and later, speak

or a nowhere and a nothing
so stark that only poetry

without a first line

Michael Shepherd

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-without-a-first-line/