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Big Top

The cathedral sticks up out of the gray mountain Like the raw knuckles of a fist at the end of an arm Or, since this is Mexico, an emaciated elephant At a circus. Surrounded by soda pop and flies Half of him is peeling pastels and crumbling graffiti In scrambled egg scallops, with people buzzing…

Ode To A Dress

Like the purple seed inside a locket the memory of such a dress hides in the heart growing what seems so slight. For years I've been asking myself why falling in love with floaty pink stripes, soft cotton. At the mall, always alone, slightly embarrassed to be there at all, I lose myself among the…

In The Woods Near Munich

— April, 1945 This soldier, this boy who moves through the innocent trees, does he regret the man he half-pushes, half-carries? The Rhine — simply another battle, a collage of mines, the human spasm: hands, hearts lost to maggots in the undergrowth. He marches on a thin gravel road, his footfall, meagre. A dung beetle…

Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven

Such wonderful tales leap, tongue-tied, from these broken names then vanish, one by one. Now morning's vanished too; each cracked stone tablet sheathes itself in noon's broad band of light — this clear, cold light, the special      province of one anxious, backward glance. Lost stories fill the ear's one      room with other rooms—all empty, room…

Matins

In a little casket, a garden begins to grow: wild roses pink as the mouths of house cats, daisies going to pieces in a loves me, loves me not lullaby, the white light of calla lilies flooding the vault's wall. Is there a baby in the casket? Yes, the blue kingdom inhabited by you, my…

Holding Court

I am willing to die at some time but on a morning choice as this I would find it too hard to give up the lavish details of this world voluntarily. Content as I am in my study of whatever passes my wrought-iron chair, I listen to all the varied forms of peace: the wind…

Lord of Autumn

Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing; there was a sigh and a…

The Mechanics of Repair

for Andy and Gail How did I spend my evening? By coming home in rain that slowly translated itself into curtain after curtain of oriental beads that I brushed through cold and very tired. All winter the repairman has come dressed in sweaters, never coats, crouched in darkness at the heart of things, trying to…

Running Out

Not much time left      here      in the other Brooklin      overlooking      Herrick Bay driven like an anchor into the town's center it is as though all of the animals had come out of the woods      to speak      now      in that instant      when the season      flees and leaves its shards in the middens the black bear, the…