Poetry

“The people need poetry.” That voice That was last heard asking for warm Clothes and money, also knew the hunger We all have for the gold light The goldfinch carries into the air Like a tang of crushed almonds. “The Kremlin mountaineer” scaled The peak of atrocity, seeking The cold final barbiturate Tablet from the…

For some semi-tropical reason when the rain falls relentlessly they fall into swimming pools, these otherwise bright and scary arachnids. They can swim a little, but not for long and they can’t climb the ladder out. They usually drown—but if you want their favor, if you believe there is a justice, rewards for not loving…

Once, there, music was playing from the radio. Adagio. It was the day they slaughtered Annie Campbell’s hens and Maggie Marley’s marmalade cats. I put myself to the test; to write a poem before the music stopped. A false field of real tension Opened then and I bent to hear those old women crying as…

For a year he’d collect the milk bottles—those cracked, chipped, or with the label’s blue scene of a farm fading. In winter they’d load the boxes on a sled and drag them to the dump which was lovely then: a white sheet drawn up, like a joke, over the face of a sleeper. As they…

Here are the directions by which You, like the others, should find me. When you come to the central square You will find a statue jump up Like a shout that ends in the point Of his finger. Turn your back And walk downhill. Pass the beggar At the towngate, but give him nothing. He’s…

I cannot worry about what lies beneath the surface, so I walk into the fragile dusk, breaking the backs of field mice still asleep under the snow. The sunlight that does not reach me illuminates the distance between this world and God’s, where winter is simply the white of perfect concentration. I would like to…

We came off the Ozarks at night, Dreaming the motels we stayed in, Skirted the snow and parked On the edge of the Grand Canyon. Now, it is the tinder of border towns, Greened ruins, locked headlands, Cow-guilted fields and scattered squalls Scouting for winter. Honey thins Out of the blood. At four o’clock The…

On the inside edge of suburbs nothing approaches bear. Laying rubber around a one-way block, trying to find a man named Evanshevski, I stop to ask a man if he is him. He promises to help. Nothing approaches bear. No way anyway to go for help. We drive around, trying to find a one-way girl…

When I arrive      and Roethke rumbas      in a green      fedora.      Hands are strangers      large as pockets      light. Mine float.      They scratch my groin.      I scatter      punctuation. Rain. Another, quieter room.      Allen Ginsberg holding court.      ancient poet luminary      poor as tinder.      The threadbare coat, the light.      Shining through thin threads.      I’m glad you’ve come      he says,…