Book I Of a first disobedience, and the fruitOf that tree, whose mortal taste brought deathInto the world, and all our woe. Sing Muse,How heaven and earth rose out of chaos;Aid my adventurous song that intendsTo soar while it pursues things attemptedIn prose and rhyme. Instruct me from the firstPresent with wings outspread, dovelike, vast….
All night, the wildfires burnin Paradise. You’ve been in Texas for a week comforting your mother. Ashes swarm our porchlightin a warm wind. How long will you be gone? I ask. You say that you’re not sure: It’s hard. Her new apartment’s strewn with boxes— and she won’t eat. Outside the wind lashes against the eaves, but still…
Look, netted in shadows of dyingelms, we study our sandwiches like manuals,unscrew thermos warheads, doze, hat brims down, while one cups a jointas if it were a hatchling, offeringthe cinder, its smoke a rope flung to where I toil astride this troughof what I never want to set,drydocked boat of wet cement I’m sculling with…
And yet, off alone, we were happywith what stayed the same, and we stood therein the space between world and plaything,upon a spot which, from the beginninghad been established for pure event. —Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Fourth Elegy” Translated by Edward Snow Beneath the highway, the stream was wide and shallow. Cars andtrucks hammered overhead, a…
Lake-deep black of night and no song we singwill do. After pillow forts, Minotaur lullabies, glow-in-the-dark starfighters, shadow animals’ chomp and gallop, wing- flap and pearl—between flood tide and lightning bloom, our son keeps awake and smiles, rhymes storm with remember, bird with brother with Earth.I kiss the rise of your hip bone, the fringe of your…
Because Ariel speaks of a king’s son,his boats aflame, crying Hell is empty,and all the devils are here, I ask myson to tell me about love. He chalks crownsand rockets across newsprint, draws wolves, rainclouds, an owlet, says You love me—and mymama. I love triceratops. We try these mornings to bring ourselves to trust inthe sound…
Mama called me one thing,named me another.Gave me a mouthon my stomach and fedme. Tied my ankles.Lit a fire round me andcalled it purification.Placed her own veilover my head. Kissedmy belly mouth. Saidit was good. It was hardto eat and speak. I didn’twant to starve. My toesdanced and burned. Ichristened this roastingsomething else. Was cast…
I am sometimes in pain and occasionally sitto write my name in dark inks and the brushgoes wobbly, as if excited into shapeswithout me. The crop fields of someone’s childhoodstill bother the edges of my vision, tawnygridded country, low born, wind gripping the assembledheads of wheat, bristling. One job seems nowjust like another. I was…
The opening to another country was always insidemy father’s mind, in many forms, in dreams: green swords swirling in a winter mist, colorful moths, sometimesa molar falling out, porcelain clattering onto the table like a single rung chime. When I come into the house, I am heldby him, become a child again. The view from…
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