I Shout Love

Milton Acorn
From: I Shout Love and other Poems, ed. James Deahl. Toronto: Aya Press, 1987. p. 23.

I shout love in a blizzard's
scarf of curling cold,
for my heart's a furred sharp-toothed thing
that rushes out whimpering
when pain cries the sign writ on it.

I shout love into your pain
when skies crack and fall
like slivers of mirrors,
and rounded fingers, blued as a great rake,
pluck the balled yarn of your brain.

I shout love at petals peeled open
by stern nurse fusion-bomb sun,
terribly like an adhesive bandage,
for love and pain, love and pain
are companions in this age.

June, 1958.

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Milton Acorn's works copyright © to the Estate of Milton Acorn.