Poetry

  • The Aviary

    When within the impenetrable green this morning is (thicket, wicker basket), the better to hear shade in shadow, twigs and stabs of light, I shut my eyes: the mockingbird sings in threes, like Dante, ninety-eight rhymes in seventeen cantos; rocks throne to throne, imbibing; wrings out each note, scrubbing on the old washboard, lets the…

  • Eugenio Montale

    The shift from Eugenio Montale's first three books—high modernist poetry, lyrically intense, elaborately wrought, musically intricate, elliptical—to his last four (Satura, the two Diaries of 1971 and 1972, and the Quaderno di quattro anni) for the translator poses obvious problems, above all of tone and continuity. The late poetry, for instance, is no less dense…

  • Middle Age

    Under the lamplight of a Paris hotel, You read Time on “The Decline of America” While your wife watches the evening news,      hoping for comprehension. You remember when you were very poor And made less money than you'll spend on this vacation. You vowed then not to romanticize that time, But your pockets stuffed with…

  • Musée d’Orsay

    They stroll in and out of the haze of time. Peering at the fractured light of the Impressionists, Not single selves but consolidations Of memories, flickering among brush strokes. And you in a rowboat in the Fifties, Squinting at picnickers at Bethesda Fountain. Above them, bicyclers hunched over and unafraid Race into Harlem, their bodies…

  • 67

    I live with my contradictions intact, seeking transcendence but loving bread. I shrug at both and from behind the summer screen I look out upon the dark, knowing death as one form of transcendence, but so is life.

  • Un tempo/Once

    Un tempo tenevo sott'occhio l'atlante degli uccelli scomparsi dalla faccia del mondo opera di un allievo di David ch'era fallito nel genere del quadro storico o in altre monumentali prosopopee pittoriche. Riflettevo su simili ipotetici atlanti di vite senza becco e senza piume da millenni irreperibili, insetti rettili pesci e anche perché no? l'uomo stesso…

  • Another Museum

    Over the Museum of Deportation, six Young violinists and two cellists play A waltz of Strauss, while German tourists dance. Why not? It's fin de siècle France, And having grown middle-aged and tired, you Can live with their Jawohls! for, at least, tonight. Behind you, students lick colorful sorbets, Lovers dance drunkenly, stumble to the…