Have we grown old before our time folding our hands without a smile or a piece of bread like monkeys, our faces unrecognizably human? We jump and clap to be cursed and mocked. And when we speak no one pays attention. And when we sleep even a bird can wake us. Israel, 1989
Il temporal foco e l'eterno veduto hai, figlio, e sei venuto in parte dov’ io per me più oltre non discerno. —Purgatorio, XXVII, 127 When a mind goes, how much we never knew goes with it. Always singular, the self in its familiar guises moves among us, breaking bread, spending a Sunday on the Battenkill,…
I lift my hands to my face my hand's the biggest thing around and filled with rivers it has stems I can see through to the dark fuzzy air I hold my hand to my face and down below I feel my legs curl up to my chest I look out at the door of…
Wanting, the enemy cast off, wades in a dark pool outside. Wanting, the oppressor, grows anklets and beads in a wet heat. Charity, the curse in love with patriots, gives all her possessions to the night, takes off her robes and waits on the narrow bed for ruin. The slightest cusp of wind disturbing both…
Twenty-one turkeys amaze our eyes, come traveling north from the Berkshire Museum (Art and Natural History). It says there boa constrictors do not harm humans. False Laocoön! not to mention Eden. On Route 7 nobody stops; but if they had a gun (or a camera in Yellowstone) they'd stop to shoot the hideous buffalo. Turkeys…
Then. No. Now. A long silk scarf of voice, pulled through the loop of throat— Jo Stafford singing on the radio. He wants so much to hear a voice like that, and it exists, as simply as creation, the way the world provides an image for the feeling that's richer than the feeling, so that…
Eat a third, drink a third, and leave a third for anger. And after waking rise slowly. And after lovemaking rise slowly. And after too much wine rise slowly. And after bloodletting rise slowly. We rise slowly after silence, taking a breath at a time. After days bent over the garden, slight comment about our…
I can't imagine life cradled between give and take, fear and desire. Will no skeleton hands tug from one side or the other? I pace your garden and pigeons scatter though one remains, his tongue fastened like wire to seed. Pure animal greed— he's consumed by it, lost judgment. Will I too hunger in your…
In this summer month, two separate men were lost in the local woods. Can woods be local? Is there more than one wood? It is unlikely. Though there are two kinds of woods, visible, and not. The first man was feeble-minded. Left his goodwill party, saw something, heard something, went to it. They found his…
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