Poetry

All bend in one wind.

—Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, June 2000 Last night the shadow of a cloud rolled off the bare mountain like a shawl slipping from the shoulder of a giant. Shirts on the clothesline sagged in rain. We burned turf, fists of earth blackening in the fireplace, room full of poets’ books leaning rumpled, half-asleep. All…

Along the strand stones, busted shells, wood scraps, bottle tops, dimpled and stainless beer cans. Something began here a century ago, a nameless disaster, perhaps a voyage to the lost continent where I was born. Now the cold winds of March dimple the gray, incoming waves. I kneel on the wet earth looking for a…

As if the names we use to name the uses of buildings x-ray our souls, war without end: Palace. Prison. Temple. School. Market. Theater. Brothel. Bank. War without end. Because to name is to possess the dreams of strangers, the temple is offended by, demands the abolition of brothel, now theater, now school; the school…

Their place is now taken by ruins, but not by ruins of themselves but of later restorations, Freud said of the Senate and People of Rome—otherwise known as SPQR, inscribed above the arch of Septimius Severus: Senatus Populus Que Romanus Silk Pajamas Quietly Rule Us Seven Peaches Quite Ripe Some Passing Qualm Resurfaced Some Private…

And then there was the night, not long After my wife had left me and taken on the world- Destroying fact of a lover, and the city Roared in flames with it outside my window, I brought home a nice woman who had listened To me chant my epic woe for three Consecutive nights of…

None of us would have admitted having sentiments or fears, but we had to have the right loafers, wide belt, sober tie, a madras jacket, hair just too long, and a studied slouch, suggesting bored intelligence and the athlete’s effortless grace. It was 1967, part and not part of what’s called now, with more than…

I spent a night in the Simic woods. I pulled my bed behind me through the trees. I was a plowshare plowing ground mist. Accordion players still playing their accordions Were lying draped over the low branches; And girls ran back and forth through the orchard Tickling their bottoms with partridge wings. “No matter what…

If I loved him—I loved him— I cannot remember the whole middle part where the gods never go, they’d be bored. Of the beginning—how many poems to describe his buoyancy, and gaze, and hands— how many times can the act of whispering together be a remonstrance to the underworld? And the end is completely remembered—…