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Subway

I am sorry, she would say. That’s all right, I would murmur. She stood with her back towards me, my nose nearly touching. The train lurched to the right, giving me the space to breathe in freely, and I waited for the swing back when I would have to lift her from my chest, with…

Psalm

In the car, his immense and hairless hands melding with the steering wheel, David accelerated into the bank of the curve, weight shifting, the outside wheels lifting, giddying him for a moment with gravity's loss, caught as if in a morning dream of flight, his fear giving way to intimations of immortality; not an idea…

Near Anahorish

I. I stood between them, the one with his tawny intelligence and fencer’s containment, his speech like a bowstring and another, unshorn and bewildered in the tubs of his wellingtons, smiling at me for help, faced with this stranger I’d brought him. II. Then the cunning voice of poetry came out of the wood across…

St. Mary of Egypt

Over Jordan she made her peace. This place had pace—its own. It was like La Puta since life adrift can seem futile. This isn’t to say she didn’t like it where the winds of fortune blew harder than desire. On the other hand, she was assured she couldn’t choose a life, drunk or not, since…

Thank You Note

I want to let you know we enjoyed the visit The large spaces were filled food was excellent stayed up late, laughed at what was funny Everyone wished they were there Slept until we woke walked in the city It was good to see you you were beautiful The rooms in your house are you…

The Poet in Residence

(after Corbière) A ruined convent on the Breton coast — Gathering-place for wind and mist, Where the donkeys of Finistère Sheltered against the ivied walls, Masonry pitted with such gaping holes There was no knowing which one was the door. Lonely but upright, in undiminished pride, The old hag of the countryside, Roof like a…

Things Past

Ten years into memory, a house      in the bright fluid time—dark grain of walnut,      dark women’s bodies, flower-shadows            in paintings by sisters. 1632 Walnut Street:      the solid multiples of eight                  like a vintage Oldsmobile, the curves of the numbers,      the porch, its roof,                  the porch light shaped a little by…

My Priest Father’s Words

Your words, my father, are clouds, spirits to inhabit, things to trace in the changes of light. Where fish dart in the shallows and the sun follows on the rise of the island, in the circle of birds, your “historia scholastica” will vanish, like these clouds, each a life with its own shadow on the…

Vigilance

                       You stand waiting. You listen.                        At your back the house is still,            between the tickings of clocks and timbers.                  Beneath the rough soles of your feet you can feel the cellar stretching to its foundations —            silence in the stone, the furnace brooding.            …