If I Had Known What I Know Now
 
If I had known what I know now — if I
had known you cannot stop a basketball
from bouncing up and down, or stop a wall
from standing where it is, perhaps the sky
might not have crashed.  No matter what you try
to do, the spring remains the spring, the fall
remains the fall, and even if you call
a lie the truth, a lie remains a lie.
 
My children might have been unborn, my wife
without a wedding ring, and I, without
their memories.  But shadows who must bow
before the darkness might have lived a life
beneath a sunlit sky and talked about
the sun, if I had known what I know now.

Yakov Azriel

If you have any comments on this poem,  Yakov Azriel would be pleased to hear from you.

Yakov Azriel's fifth book of poetry, CLOSET SONNETS: THE LIFE OF G.S. CROWN (1950-2021), was published recently by Sheep Meadow Press. Several of the sonnets were published pseudonymously in Snakeskin.