Poetry

In the first weeks, they wanted for nothing. This is how it always is— bountiful body, ravenous laws. They watched at the curb as the horse parade passed: colorful flags, fanfare, such clapping. They called to the elderly couple across the way, raising their pale hands each morning and evening, as to an old question….

The glass shone cold with water fresh from somebody’s old “family spring” west of the Blue Ridge. I drank half in one continuous gulp—not greed, but because the day was hot. Then, out of breath or the telephone rang, I don’t remember— I stopped. I put the glass down to mist on the counter as…

I could think the novella. I could compose over time “their code, their shorthand bells.” There’s a cart and there’s a peach: two things but no ambiguity. Little Kaspar lies in the dark alone on a list with his wooden horse. Little Fred, barely able to contain his eagerness to record his experiences, rushes to…

You, of all the masters, have been the secret sharer Of what’s most important,                                             exclusion, Until the form is given us out of what has been given, And never imposed upon, Scrape and erase, scrape and erase                                                          until the object comes clear. I well remember the time I didn’t visit you In Bologna,…

White ash, starling, lung of river rising and filling with silt: winter has gone, took its flood and its filth. This is the one season your house stands on dry feet. Today, I am half as tall as your house, my eye watching through the eye of the cobweb as wind makes its thrifty shuffle…

I have dreamed of you so much you are the headless hawk I found in a field, upturned like a plow blade of feathers. “Pick me up,” you said, “so I might roost as if I were the hawk.” I have dreamed of you so much, a tree grew where I stood, and grass rose…

Once she stole a boat—is this how it started— at night to bring the pond a gift— it was a bird of salt—which was taken into its reflection. But the pond is not the sea. This is where you lived. The lesson of dissolve—but it was a bird—sifted to the bottom of all her actions….

Wind shook the trees and rain crackled at the windows. Could it have been any other way? Rain coming down, clothes wet, water dripping from our hair? At the window, could it have been a ghost singing its final warning? Clothes wet, water dripping from our hair, he fell on me like rain. I could…

translated by G. Wiersma let’s ignore what happened in the past in a place that could be anywhere a lamp flickers between sparks of light in darkness I am precisely etched happiness or suffering just at this moment are indistinguishable