Poetry

Poco filo mi resta, ma spero che avrò modo di dedicare al prossimo tiranno i miei poveri carmi. Non mi dirà di svenarmi come Nerone a Lucano. Vorrà una lode spontanea scaturita da un cuore riconoscente e ne avrà ad abbondanza. Potrò egualmente lasciare orma durevole. In poesia quello che conta non è il contenuto…

Nature is never wrong, the lilies say, Simply alive in the pond, life goes on. Despite carnivorous violence, firestorms, We are porcelain quiet. Sit on this bench, Listen to the Baroque Ensemble play Music composed during the French Revolution; cherish the bees Closed in our petals, close your eyes, Close them, close yourself in these…

Too conscious of our need for pillows, he rises from bed to walk the street. No need, he thinks, for underwear or other gauze to dress his soul. Because he is alone this late at night we can forgive his need for walking out beyond his robe. He is that near to seeing himself as…

Alla televisione Cristo in croce cantava come un tenore colto da un'improvvisa colica pop. Era stato tentato poco prima dal diavolo vestito da donna nuda. Questa è la religione del ventesimo secolo. Probabilmente la notte di San Bartolomeo o la coda troncata di una lucertola hanno lo stesso peso nell'Economia dello Spirito fondata sul principio…

A seemingly obliterating storm Rinses the haze from peaks you hadn't seen before. Red-and-white peppermint parasails Float above the gift shops of Bellagio. In Lake Como, youth bare-breasted and muscular, Fill speedboats and sailboats, a girl With long blond hair stands on her father's shoulders And dives into the polluted waters. The roads dry, you…

The night Sam Cooke was shot, I ran out into the backyard and shouted, “Suck my dick, God!” My father slapped my face, said if he ever heard me say anything like that again, I could forget about driving, ever— I'd be in my own house with my own kids and he'd show up to…

Last summer, composer Ben Yarmolinsky, whom I had never met, called me with the idea of my writing a libretto about the eleven o'clock news, called NewsSongs, commissioned by American Opera Projects. After we agreed on a basic structure, I proceeded to write the text, then-titled Blind Witness NewsSpiel, which is printed here. It differs…

The libretto of The Singers of Lesbos, a two-act opera set in 590 B.C., is very much a work-in-progress, because the composer is still to be chosen. Although I expect to change the libretto in various ways to suit my composer, the set poetic pieces reproduced here should stay much the same. They comprise two…

Today I returned To see those two worn-out and rumpled Representatives of the common world (Were they mother and son, Or did they merely resemble each other?) Kneeling in adoration Before the elongated Mannerist Apparition of the Virgin Bearing a chubby five-year-old Son of God Out of her sacred house And into the world As…