I read the brown sentences of my great-grandfather, As if—not even as if—but actually Looking into a brown photograph as old As his writing is. In his sentences Two innocent naked young men, Methodists, Bathe in the morning in the Rapahannock River. Fredericksburg, Virginia, Eighteen Sixty-Four. Brother Pierson and I went out and bathed in…
“I was Latin, born to a noble Tuscan; Guiglielm Aldobrandesco was my father, though you, perhaps, have never heard his name. The gallant deeds and antique pedigree of my forebears fostered an insolence so great that I ignored our common mother and held all men in scorn, persisting till I died of it—as know the…
* I 1 Dear little insect —they called you Mosca, I don’t know why— this evening as I was reading Deutero-Isaiah in the near-dark you reappeared beside me; but you didn’t have glasses, you couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t recognize you in the dusk without their glitter. 2 No glasses or antennae, poor insect,…
For whom do I speak, now, so far away from home? For whom do I write, now, so far away from myself? I speak for the experience of the flux I’ve become; I write for the concrete to fill in the distances from the house on the road I lived on, from the warm home…
On Boul Miche Idling at the curb In a rented car, Ready to go. But I have forgotten something! It’s my hat, of course: “Of all things Why would Daddy forget His darling hat?” I leave the motor running, Bolt through the great doors And past the concierge. Horns are blowing Out there where I…
You live among the remnants of an ancient civilization that has left behind it an intricate system of canals and waterways. No one understands the books and rituals your ancestors handed down to you, but somehow everybody assumes that it must be necessary to maintain the waterways to irrigate the rice crop. Only at the…
Chicory and queen anne’s lace line the way And orange day lilies, spread From the yard of some long vanished cabin. The statue of a button-eyed brown rabbit (When I am almost on him) Comes to life And leaps, excited and light-hearted, Into the brush. The lane is walled With dogwood of course and judas…
You’re over seven feet tall and weigh close to three hundred pounds, but you’re so well proportioned that nobody ever realizes just how big you are until he sees you standing next to another human being. Your manner with other people is gentle and considerate. One afternoon while you’re sitting in a bar with friends,…
It wasn’t my grandfather’s. He lectured at Tremont Hall On a snowy night. As a starter—just to break the ice—he cracked: “I’m glad the both of you could come.” There wasn’t even scattered laughter In the half empty house. After his peroration And after he had swept off back stage His Prince Albert skirts Breezing…
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