Poetry

There was in the corner of the living room an album of      unbearable photos, many meters high and infinite minutes old, over which everyone leaned in the joy of mocking the dead in frock coats. A worm began to chew the indifferent frock coats and chew the pages, the inscriptions and even the dust of…

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” My child and I Are walking around the block. No sea heaves near. No anger Blooms through the perfect sky. The flashing of the wheels Of a passing car is not The flashing of that fate I might have feared, not this Sunday. A page from a…

I make an elephant from the little I have. Wood from old furniture holds him up, and I fill him with cotton, silk, and sweetness. Glue keeps his heavy ears in place. His rolled-up trunk is the happiest part of his architecture. But there are also his tusks made of that rare material I cannot…

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…

     Even a Pyrrhonist Who knows only that he can never know      (But adores a paradox) Would admit it’s getting dark. Pale as a wrist-      Watch numeral glow, Fireflies build a sky among the phlox,      Imparting their faint light Conservatively only to themselves.      Earthmurk and flowerscent Sweeten the homes of ants. Comes on the night      When…

1. Georgia Black train flying north, Rita’s hat Awfully large and with a white ribbon, Legs crossed, cheap novel in her lap, Fingers casual on a bright necklace; Someone across the aisle is snapping Newspaper pages and blowing cigar smoke— This game of American spaces is tiresome: Trains may pound paradise into honeymoons And politics,…