What LastsAuthor(s): Marvin BellSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1971), p. 33Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20157761 .

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WHAT LASTS

So help me, Love, you and I.

Paper into pulp, and our words last

as ashes to cool the sun.

The pen lasts in stories by the fire, the ink bubbles, the word is cremated

and spreads dumbly as in our lungs.

I wanted to speak it now. And how

the explosive sound of the lungs,

collapsing as they give back air?

we have had that energy, burning. We have been at the throat of the world.

We have had a lifetime.

I concede to that blue flower, the sky, a more than passing moral guidance. Because light flashes, dies, flashes, some sing the rhapsody of the liver.

Yet what the symbol is to the flower

the flower itself is to something or other.

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