We counted the epochs with venerable names, with dry thorns, with dry asphodel — Justinian, Mavrikios, the Androniki Kommini Paleologi, Mr. Manouil with his long worry beads made of thick amber — “Renowned city” they called it; “the cloud-topped stronghold of all that is Greek”; and the three reservoirs opposite the illustrious Sea of Myrtoo…
In the dream I carry inside me, which is no dream, I am always the child between them. A family sits down to supper, the yellow kitchen yellow with light. Father sits here, and Mother sits here, and this chair in the middle is mine. Someone argues or complains. Or maybe there is only the…
Atomized grandmother, recluse, generation gone to fragments, I am above Chicago for the last time, meeting you outside the window, still alone in your lonely particles. A drift of shattered lace and bones. I fly through your rising dust, cutting through like a scythe, above you and with you. And now we are flying together,…
Love is the hardest rock and the fragile, brine-drenched ships, love is the other ship of rock, the untraveled, yet thousand-times traveled ship on the highest seas — oh the chafing of patience — with love I fashioned death, with love also my work; I went down — he said — to the town market,…
That night was nothing we knew. We’d never seen such stars, not even there, in Texas. My mother held the sky maps and leaned so far back she fell. She wasn’t hurt. Nothing can hurt her, I thought, who didn’t know, and aimed my flashlight at the night, and shot. A long way from here…
In advance, much deconstruction and rebuilding. You guess what each part must do at a crucial moment then memorize the whole. If every click is not dreamlike you take it down again. Much bathing of stars and rings and springs in clear solvents. Letters with numbered codes and curious names go out at night to…
We’ve read much, we’ve forgotten much. Afterward we unlearned all we had learned — what lead and what gold seals — forgeries, counterfeits, rub outs with a razor blade, a penknife, with gum erasers or a fountain pen; and the new script spreading on the parchment, betraying the usurper of others’ perogatives and titles, the…
* Is it for me to call her by her name, she at whose command the air is blessed tonight and the roads lie without the slightest ounce of perturbation Ezi di mma? Or is it for me to hold back from all such mention of her name and let what is sheltered rest as…
In our house it’s still dark, the shapes of furniture indistinct, but my attention drifts out the window, I’m vaguely happy keeping vigil at the stove. One moment the sun is shining, the next a wet snow saturates the hills. Dark clouds set the pack of dogs barking, the cows start their slow ride to…
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