Poetry

The boy, missing the city intensely at this moment, Mopes and sulks at the window. There's the first owl now,      quite near, But the boy hardly notices. And the kerosene lamp Goes on sputtering, giving off vague medicinal fumes That make him think of sick-rooms. He has been memorizing ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ but…

The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and      prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little      downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked      graves and oceans. Sluiced by salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated      rivers, By snow and…

On the second day of Three Mile Island Annie and I drove southwest at sunset to visit her family in Connecticut. The sun was large and red and hazy and it was easy to imagine the sun was angry. Traffic going our way was fairly thick — all heading more or less toward Pennsylvania. Lemmings,…

           translated by the author and Robert Pinsky I walk those corridors by torchlight Hearing water trickle down onto broken slabs. Deep into the mountain. In niches, busts of my friends, Their eyes are of marble. Only the light and shadow Throw over their faces a brief sour grimace of life. So, further into the…

Yes, we all have those spots of time, as Wordsworth said, when we see the deeper reality that’s always waiting. For example, I stood beside a red Volkswagen in the rain feeling the wind on my face, as wind is frequently      a conductor of various profound intimations, I saw evergreen trees reflected in the rear…

In the first dream she is the enemy — spangled in love’s armor, wearing the sweater she knitted for him, and she looks prettier than in the photo you discover in his bottom drawer that puts her in perspective — all scowls and squinting at the sun, unflattering as he has captured her. Possession is…

The train is crossing a river in a city where everything’s a shade of brown, though it’s June, but when I look out a pleasure boat tilts by, making a wake that resembles a triangular scarf: flat and silver, following the boat like a thing. Looking: it’s optional and safe the sense with a lid…

negotiate their way across a frozen lake, careful not to touch, careful not to upset each other’s balance. The house is quiet; I have been thinking about them all evening and now, my window spills across the ice the narrow path of light they are walking on. It’s hard to see but I think the…

She’s supposed to be land clearing Heaping the brush to be burned in first snow But the pale yellow ghost of the tall Summer grasses she sweeps down Is instead caught in her hand And placed that way in a kitchen vase Showing a warmth to last us thru winter