Poetry

Not wilderness exactly open country a wooded valley and the river in it waterfall and towpath footbridge     lockhouse a canal that runs to Cumberland beside the Potomac     not wilderness     you know that bounded parkland with your neighborhood above it stage set by some Luminist where you describe the hour     convinced no calendar can register a…

Arias, not only of voice, but as when tan grasses blow and bend yellow and pink then darken then yellow, or someone’s betrayal fills another with darkness—so I have felt my fill. At the opera this week Pagliacci— heartbreaking, sexy—lover, husband, wife, another lover scorned. The week before the town gossip: a friend having left…

                                                                        lynch not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels turning, and not the strip of land that marks the border between two fields. unrelated to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever connects one part to another, and therefore not a measure of chain, which in any case is…

You showed up late and angry. You shat upon the floor. With that, how could we fail to recognize you? Your father, grief’s tent show wizard, the long connected silks pouring from his sleeve. And your mother? Haven’t you known me wholly as the spider knows each tilting and imperfect room she sews to be…

(July evenings occur as a name repeated.) Strange benefit of geography. He studied me at mirrors but recalled only photographs and houses leaning seasonal (a deluded shoreline). Ascertain bird or cicada near. Awaken to a darkened background clouded North by noon. Here is a reverse. We take of gales and a landscape of driving rain….

I need you to get me a ticket, he said. For what, I asked, waking at the foot of his bed. For the train, he said. They say I need a ticket. Except for the small lamp the room was dark. The air was cool and clear. The first night of September. Do you know…

translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras & Dana Bonstrom On a wager one journeys alone, else There is neither journey nor wager. Passepartout, your name spoke for itself but beneath lay contempt and coercion. Loyalty? What loyalty? Till when? And why? What of yours was at risk? Would I win the wager you’d doubtless…

A circle of young: vicious. A circle of young: smells like sugar. A circle of young: why such organization?                               Around what? Around how? And into the circle is assimilation. Meaning: The girl with blue eyes is a foreigner. Xenophobic is a fawning. It smells delicious, of lavender and his mother: He slept with her….

There is no further trace of the painter and wall this house out of heathen legend. Her feet in our boat. In a green meadow I saw madness. Were singing. There is a word which means dark or blue or the black stream. Having spent years there darkening mountains—sea-caved and frayed. Walk before me still…