Poetry

Susan, whose father is dead, is thinking as she waits for the conversation between her mother and me to end: Why didn’t he die instead of my father? Why should his daughter have a father and not my father’s daughter? Must I from now on feel as if absent in myself, where my father reigned…

Dying, the salmon heaves up its head in the millstream. Great sores ring its gills, its eyes, a burning rust slowly corrodes the redgold skin. Great river king, nearby the Nore pours over foaming weirs its light & music, endlessly dissolving walls into webs of water that drift away among slow meadows. But you are…

my husband looks at me some evenings as if I were about to leave his home. it’s a stolen look one I’ve grown familiar with this last month. it’s there in his eyes over breakfast but more frequently and lingeringly after dinner. he’ll sit in the grey leather chair his legs crossed his flannel trousers…

Rain stretches along the heaving avenue— The building and clouds are stacked gray on gray. We avoid the rivers of water until it is useless— The rain is full of clothes. *      *      * Later in the year the grass and bushes were so dry we hoped a large wind would blow them away. When…

We have been there      and seen nothing Nothing has been there      for us to see In what a beautiful silence      the death is inflicted In a dazzling distance      in the fresh dews And morning lights      how radiantly In the glistening      the village is wasted. It is by such sights      the eye is instructed

He is pulling blood in, trying to be strong in the mirror. The word gives him trouble and he pushes it away, wondering, what will come now? who will come? All his adventures are in his mind. The large muscles serve no one. He dreams of Germany and hopes to be a policeman. He would…

I want to let you know we enjoyed the visit The large spaces were filled food was excellent stayed up late, laughed at what was funny Everyone wished they were there Slept until we woke walked in the city It was good to see you you were beautiful The rooms in your house are you…

The face looking into the room; Behind it light, shaking, like heat Lightning; the face calm and knowing; Seeing but not seeing who I am; The mouth maybe telling something. Something about our helplessness; Something about the confusions of beasts; The consequence of error; systems Haywire, or working; the stars gone All wrong in the…

She’s like the moon: at perigee his tides are out of whack, his coasts tormented. What was one place is called another, farther in or out than on the charts or in old stories. He rents a plane and flies up in the evening to observe as one might an eclipse, or storm, or nine…