Jack Gilbert's "The Great Fires"

Jack Gilbert is a modern poet who writes with a grace that only comes after many years. He brings a maturity to the modern vocabulary of romance, reclaiming love's language for the adults from the teen culture ideals that too often hold sway. 
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite.  Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong.  We say bread and it means according
to which nation.  French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure.  A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient 
tongue has no words for endearment.  I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can.  Maybe the Etruscan texts would 
finally explain why the couples on their tombs 
are smiling.  And maybe not.  When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records.  But what if they
are poems or psalms?  My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton.  My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey.  Shiploads of thuya are what 
my body wants to say to your body.  Giraffes are this
desire in the dark.  Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map.  What we feel most has 
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
Gilbert explores themes finding the truth of love in an adulterous affair, expressing love by taking care of a dying lover, coming to terms with the grief after that lover passes away, of exploring the realm between love and passion. Although he describes ideas in terms that are universal, "The Great Fires" is intensely personal as well. 
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath.  When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against 
his chest.  He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over.  Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb.  But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
The poem seems like a mere technical piece, until the title, "Michiko Dead", is acknowledged, Michiko being one of Gilbert's greatest losses, the recipient of the dedication of the collection.

I first heard of Jack Gilbert on Fresh Air on National Public Radio. The program mentioned Gilbert’s belief that every person can have four great loves in their life. (Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate any further references to this idea) This somehow seemed a much more human number than the "one great love" that our culture sometimes seems to stress. It can sometimes be reassuring to calculate one’s Gilbert Numbers, the count of the loves of our history, the count of loves yet to come.

The collection is "The Great Fires," published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. I can recommend no other collection of romantic poems more highly.

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