Poetry: “What Words Do I Not Yet Have?” by Ben Cooper
“The moon has no need for your poetry,” Ben Cooper says, and he’s right. Sometimes we have to hear difficult truths, difficult versions of the truth. But in his poem, “What Words Do I Not Yet Have,” Cooper doesn’t look at this as a road block; rather he sees it as an invitation, or a challenge. The imaginative contemplation—of trees, water, the wind—all beautiful and evocative in their own right—of this poem allow us to realize our tiny, almost insignificant place in the world. Cooper doesn’t feel that this is a negative feeling, however, and his examinations of the world around him are not only rigorous, they are full of precise language and stunning beauty. The world is a beautiful place, and Cooper’s world is full of optimism and promise and opportunity for discovery; his imprint on it is less important than what he can observe, learn, discover, and share.
What Words Do I Not Yet Have?
–a struggle for and against
Ludwig Wittgenstein
–a struggle for and against
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I.
The moon has no need for your poetry. If it wants
to sail through the sky unannounced, face half darkened
The moon has no need for your poetry. If it wants
to sail through the sky unannounced, face half darkened
as it rotates in the buffeting solar winds,
it simply will. Silently and without rhyme. Or is it
that the rock won’t turn until I calculate
its movement by degrees, watching as it crests
and sets on the expanded horizon. I am not to the moon
what the moon is to me. I am not the moon.
II.
The wind has no need for the song it creates
when it whistles through the trees. It will carry
the leaves from the bending bows and tumble them
through the garden. I didn’t mean to feel the crunch
underfoot, it was just sitting awkward
in my path. Would the scraps still find me
if not for the words I chose to use, the music
I had to hear? I am the limit of this picture.
III.
Do you think the gentle curve of the never-
twice river depends on your shallow
footprints—that its wander once waited
for you? My world is mine, your world
is yours. The storm still hangs deep on the wind-
thickened sky, filling in the spaces I leave behind.
The world has no need for us, but here
we are, in so much need.
Ben Cooper
Ben Cooper is an undergraduate student studying both creative writing and philosophy at Salisbury University. His poetry aims to provoke deep thought and reflection from his audience, exploring the absurdities of life, the mysteries of faith, and the necessity of hope. He also works as an assistant editor at Poet Lore, and his work has been published in Penn Review and The Shore.
