From his monstrous planet, light-years from the cities, And still coated in protective larva, He arrives in no-time flat. Within himself, as if chanting A mantra, he whispers “curved space,” “chronity,” “Warped equation,” “parallel breath.” The silence Of the ashen landscape dunks his heart In a deeper ocean of quiet. The ghosts take no notice….
Always you feel beautiful in the light. Is it only sensation you've craved: the body born to bloom, arcing open beneath the sun, the smile surrounding your every curve, pore, angle. For this some say you may have sold your soul. So now for days, months, more, there's been nothing to make you shine as…
When I eat crab, slide the rosy rubbery claw across my tongue I think of my mother. She'd drive down to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a huge car, she'd ask the crab-man to crack it for her. She'd stand and wait as the pliers broke those chalky homes, wild- red and…
With your silent, slender hand you put out stars. You give away my name like a bee does honey. Bite into me! You ignite my eyes. A distant sea of buffaloes in the green, ashen air. The taste is replaceable, I am not. Nailed to the cross, I spend your fruit. And look—every drop of…
Craig Raine's new kind of poetry has yet to reach a substantial audience in the United States. But, if the reviews can be believed, Raine's reputation in Britain exceeds that of any contemporary poet on this side of the Atlantic. Raine's four books- The Onion, Memory, A Martian Sends a Post Card Home, Rich, and…
In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept creeping over the smooth plastic to find your strong meaty little hand and squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the noble ribbing of the corduroy, straight and regular as anything in nature, to find the slack…
It is evident not only in the general frame of Nature, that things most manifest unto sense have proved obscure unto the understanding. Sir Thomas Browne “Hi.” “Hi.” “You OK?” “I guess . . . You?” “I miss you.” “I miss you too.” “What are you doing?” “Reading . . . You?” “The Late Show.”…
I discovered Craig Raine's work (first his remarkable second book A Martian Sends a Postcard Home and then his first book The Onion, Memory) about eight years ago. I was immediately struck by its eloquence, which is never stuffy or merely decorative, by the sharpness of its tone, and by the odd rightness of its…
Three months after he lies dead, that long yellow narrow body, not like Christ but like one of his saints, the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs, the ones who died of nettles, bile, the one who died roasted over a slow fire— three months…
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