Poetry

Sometime in the early 1960’s, Robert Lowell began to collaborate with Leonard Bernstein on Bernstein’s third symphony, Kaddish. Three poems were written before the collaboration was broken off. Bernstein in the end wrote his own text. Lowell’s three poems are published here for the first time. I      Brothers, we glory in this blinding hour,      our…

Dear Bob: Thanks for your typical douche letter. Since Xmas I haven’t been doing much. I can say that I’m not watching TV all day, or smoking pot. I read Books, write letters, learn Swahili, —Smoke pot—, look for jobs, which Includes travelling and throwing my knife. I’m getting pretty good at it. I can,…

I am mentioning, long distance, my vacation. She remembers raspberries. “There were so many, it was ridiculous. In the city, they were something like eighty-nine cents a half-pint. We cleaned out the bottom of the hill and by the time we came down again new ones had gotten ripe. I must have eaten about ten…

          Swifts or barn swallows — No matter which, Well named, Swoop down like angry bees All about my head. Like little whistling darts they are, Shot by some vengeful spirit From up in the barn loft. So many questions aimed at me. What do they want of a poor old soul, Slow witted, unswift of…

Glasses drained, Cigars smoked to their bands, Conversation. Deep looks. Smiles. Night lurches, repeats itself, Sees double in our little Glassed-in terrace-garden. Winds down, as fog calms the city Spun from the blue smoke Running Circles around us. Speakers lost in foliage Direct cooling airs— Stately, bright, insouciant— Conditioned as we are To the little…

The whole square turns to ice: It is a cube popped free from the past’s causation, from future’s effect, so that my father, long dead, is back at the wheel of our ’49 Chevy, steering my mother, my sister, and me on treadless tires over the ice; though even in the dream we know he…

     —For Brenda and Jerry Each day I take the bike out, riding deeper and deeper into my own dark forest, green, wet with the eyes of animals. I am following the dead, their distant backs, hoping they’ll turn and be themselves when they see I know them; the deer, in that new country so still,…

Warned, warned for years what too much love would do, I settled for never enough. I did not have a body, sleeping in the attic, spare and still, suns falling past the tiny window, blooded, always the maples whispering below, rattling with leaves, rattling with emptiness. Too much sleeping woke me. My arms opened first,…

For the last time I lie harbored in the bed, tied like a boat to my husband. I think everyone has died. The season mumbles in the hills, I stay to hear if it is summer envying even this cold wind that finds its way into the house. Oh sad to clean the floor and…