It struck me today, while trying to explain to a student how he should go to hell, that all my languages are rusty. My French for Graduates, my old Latin minor, my Berlitz German — oh my Esperanto's hopeless. All my Englishes too, Old, Middle, Modern, Pidgin, Basic. In Paris I asked for a room…
His watch chain looped golden nowhere In air of the mill town. Shrubbery, Head-high bubbles leafily guarding recollection — Up steps to the parlor and the puzzle — Materialized uncertainly, in connection with The streets as I remembered. German Shepherds now only dog-sized, not Polar bear monuments half out of National Geographic Frisked the one…
The double-barreled twelve gauge that knocked even our father back a step when he fired it; the pump-action twenty-gauge he later gave to me; the pistol (Mother's favorite) we thought was a Yankee's, its notched hammer becoming its rear sight when it was cocked; the damaged Kentucky long rifle; two over-and-under shotgun-rifles; and a thirty-thirty…
There was one river then. No one had thumbs. Even the tiger grew green in her skin. We basked and we sang in the general light. Someone noticed: stars circle, sun rises and rises, moon's belly swells fresh. And there by the lake's reeds she told us with signs bury me. Ash fell. The trees…
Still in sleeping bags, the promised delivery only words as usual, our lives upside down, we are transients lost in thirteen rooms built by a judge who died. The landlord says they mean no harm, the bats, and still I wake at the shrill whistling, the flutter overhead. I fumble to a tall window open…
The zinnias, not blood-red as planned, nudge out strange yellowish blooms, never reach the height the packet claimed. Verbena sprays turn purple where I'd wanted white. Love-in-a-mist foliage spreads, a lovely feathery green, but never buds. I can't stop fiddling with them, watering, urging, staring them down as though I can will them into a…
No huckster. She wakes in her earthworks enraged. A bush burns. She grizzles. The whole world turns ash and she gladdens. Mutterous rumbles: beware, soil, repent. She chivvies, nights, digs locks tenacious great jaws in the lair of her skull. She consumes. She maintains her autochthonous visions. There in the roots — look, see what…
After a night of rain like a waterfall, The stony lane that winds up Knocknarea Is a runnel of swift water winding downward. You should wear your Wellingtons and carry a stick. The stones are slippery and the dog at the gate Is fierce and requires a cheerful word in passing. The way up is…
From Boston south he talks of citrus fruit And extra children who pop like extra toes. A good man cuts them off or he makes room. His girlfriend knows that she will never laugh. There is an old man who has lived in shoes, Refinished basements, plastered catacombs Where the cold walls felt like a…
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