What a story it would have been,
about a man rotting in a self-dug pit
when gilded wings came down and wrapped him ‘round
and honeyed lips came down and spared no kiss
and spared no hope
‘till he was lifted
up to the light of the living.
What a story it would have been,
one you tell yourself through every night,
your feathers scattered in the tar around us –
black bitter sheets that sucked up all your warmth
as I dragged you down,
convincing you
that neither of us can fly.
Daniel Revach is a graduate student at Oxford University and an aspiring failed artist. He approaches his poetry like he approaches his scientific pursuits: rather than an act of creation, it is the discovery of the universal in the particular.