Poetry

and I have five. Surrounded by them, I was manless for years. You led me to kindergarten. In the back alleys of our housing project, in the winter halflight, no neighborhood kid could come between us. At home you called my faults like foul plays: “Error.” This is the walled city, family. Within, all the…

June 4, 1977 A falling star, or worse, a planet (true or bogus) may thrill your idle eye with its quick hocus-pocus. Look, look then at that locus which doesn't deserve sharp      focus. *     *      * There frowning forests stand decked out in rags and tatters. Departing from point ‘A,’ a train there bravely scatters its…

High summer. I lead you to the woods to what must have been a lawn beside the ruins of what was someone's house. Here we lay our things; the blanket, the champagne, the prophylactics. The day so warm and you are beautiful and we don't know what we're doing. Beautiful and perfect, hair loosed as…

After the cocoon, then the monarch; after the first frost on the glass, we watch the leaves: red for maple, brown for oak. For the last day, wings. In the ancient ceremony silent players enter the festive houses, play dice with the citizens. So these days follow, September to November, like the click of bone…

Please don't take the cemeteries. We can't sleep when the dead fidget in air, their frantic fingers hushing the wind. We'll give bread, or pastures, even the trees tucked into themselves like frightened children. But please don't take the cemeteries. For each stone there is a blossom, a tear, an empty room where someone waits…

I was talking about mutual responsibility; you had been interested in my analysis of the problems of dual control in driving lessons; having control when you had none, I said, “Remember that I am saying all this and that I am taking full responsibility for saying this,” and poured my heart out to you. That…

for Dawn Chin, a student from Korea You're barely twenty. Your last essay for me begins: “Until I realized the value of life, I sure went through a lot of anguish of the heart.” All our Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays together, I put in of and the and couldn't explain why we say, “I tried to…

What in the sour wind Made the voices come again And the trees begin To move in? Spoken to And spoken for, You were waited upon And waiting. The leaves woke On the windcombed branches, And the footed trunks Not in twos advanced But like a lightless fire From the hill descended. *     *      * You…

All identity is active statement. —George Steiner 1.      A file of dated letters and a voice      the important survivor agrees at last      to your visit, two days for your recorder.      What you know, you review, earliest      meetings, estrangements, awkward returnings,      rumors and echoes of rumors, questions,      a desire to breathe that air.      Finally hours of…