Poetry

Lineage had nothing to do with their renown, Mrs. Sanborn wrote: “Twas ever personality that counted at Sewanee. (Her subject was Sewanee dogs.) If money meant more than we feel it will in Heaven, — it does that when lacking. Family, dear to “all sorts and conditions,” remained a point of pride. As in any…

In 1936, a child in Hitler’s Germany, what did I know about the war in Spain? Andalusia was a tango on a wind-up gramophone, Franco a hero’s face in the paper. No one told me about a poet for whose sake I might have learned Spanish bleeding to death on a barren hill. All I…

Two old friends, dead too early. September. And then May. Now here, July, high mid-                 July: the lettuce tidal with dew, the hedge grown tall with cedar waxwings. A ruby-throat holds in mid-air,      sipping long at the feeder. Given death, our fortune is to live the life the dead left without words, to take…

A man who works in our bank tells me, because I have a Dutch name, that in the war his battalion liberated Maastricht. “We all went back years later, and the people gave us a real celebration. . .” A weekend in Maastricht! Pastry shops in ancient grey buildings. Our host, whose arm was paralyzed…

I. Insomnia The bulb at the front door burns and burns. If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming through another endless night. The moon knows the routine; it beats the bushes from east to west and sets empty-handed. Again the one she is waiting for has outrun the moon. II. Old…

He pushed across the street to where she waited. If this was love, it was the other kind, not any different from what he’d known. For her part, she never thought of it as love, just one person helping another move some household things from one room to another cold room in bad weather. She…

It becomes cold and colder the year has no color in it little Dimitri plays the piano until his fingers stiffen with cold. Cold in the line waiting for bread six hours make us patient thin animals waiting as though bread is an unfamiliar food a kind of miracle we hardly expect. We give it…

The horse beneath me seemed To know what course to steer Through the horror of snow I dreamed, And so I had no fear, Nor was I chilled to death By the wind’s white shudders, thanks To the veils of his patient breath And the mist of sweat from his flanks. It seemed that all…

When the shift was over he went out and stood under the night sky a mile from the darkened baseball stadium and waited for the bus. He could taste nickel under his tongue, and when he swiped the back of his hand across his nose he caught the smell of hydrochloric acid. There were clouds…