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…
(for Kate) It’s the one thing you’ve asked for — your medicine now, not hours from now, on the way home, after this new rigmarole of your x-rays, tests, upstairs, downstairs — but I simply can’t find a drugstore. Back at the clinic, I can’t even find you again — I’m shown to still another…
The moon clouds over and is done. The Polish crones roam Mutual Tower spitting, polishing, sifting the trash for small gifts their grandchildren will turn into trash. Deep in the folds of the dark, some poor infant cries and cries for comfort and will not be calmed. Under the police siren’s wail it continues, clearing…
1 Hey, Joe When my sister was in college whenever she wrote a paper she’d sit there picturing her teacher reading it collapsing with derision rushing to phone a friend — “Hey, Joe — ya gotta hear this one!” She’d go on about this fantasy to a friend of ours, who, around this time, got…
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