House, house, go away, you’re looking prettier all the time and look me I’m a rag, a brush, a mop, a hammer. I’m your lowly employee not what I intended— I wanted shelter, a self-propelled houseboat. Housepainting for a fortnight now, I have no idea how long I’ve been stroking white up down back forth…
One day the physician Oberdorfer approached Kepler with a stealthy smile and – could it be? – a wink, and invited him to come on a certain day to the house of Herr Georg Hartmann von Stubenberg, a merchant of the town. Kepler did not know the man, but he went, thinking he was to…
Your absent name at rollcall was more present than you ever were, forever on parole in the back of the class. The first morning you were gone, we practiced penmanship to keep our minds off you. My fist uncoiled chains of connecting circles, oscilloscopic hills; my carved-up desk, rippled as a washboard. A train cut…
You and you my masters Though you have told me exactly what to do Are now no longer wanted, I cannot bother To imitate your actions nor your heroes —John Cornford At least we were all well read Those books on barricades tear gas the wars civil Or world won in the name of any…
Benedict Kiely, a writer in whom are joined magnificent lyrical and comic gifts, is one of the most admired of literary figures in his native Ireland. Although a number of his novels have been published here and his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, he has not had the kind of…
There — but for the clutch of luck — go I. At daybreak — in the pitch, arctic fog of a February daybreak — Shoulderlength helmets in the watchtowers of the concentration camp Caught me out in the intersecting arcs of the swirling searchlights: There were at least a zillion of us caught out there…
I wish I could walk deep into a field of spiked wheat reaching my waist and not ask that question, where the sun laces my chest with its indifferent heat, and the sky seems only a backdrop for sharp birds that tuck their wings and glide, where each step pops crickets into quick arcs like…
There is no Simple circumstance, As when a boy hiding In a closet Beside a manikin swoons In the mist of A grandmother’s sachet. The crooked White sticks of the legs And arms bent around Him, as he imagines He is older, Standing in a wooded field, The beads of lavender Rolling In the yellow…
For some semi-tropical reason when the rain falls relentlessly they fall into swimming pools, these otherwise bright and scary arachnids. They can swim a little, but not for long and they can’t climb the ladder out. They usually drown—but if you want their favor, if you believe there is a justice, rewards for not loving…
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