VI Although I do not hope to turn again Although I do not hope Although I do not hope to turn Wavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things […]
by David Berman A child needs to know the point of the holiday. His aunt is saying grace over a decaffeinated coffee and her daughter is reading a Russian novel whose 45 chapters are set on 45 consecutive Valentine’s Days. Grandpa is telling the kids fairy tales from Pennsylvania’s pretzel-making region and it’s hard for […]
by Donald Hall She laid bricks arranged in V’s underneath the garden’s rage of blossom. After her death, after the freezes of many winters, her bricks rise and dip undulant by the wellhead, in summer softened by moss, and in deep June I see preterite, revenant poppies fix, waver, fix, waver, fix… –Read at St. […]
by Lenore Hildebrandt Lately, our tenses are neither present nor past, but impossibly absent as we try to take hold. Contrary to what is written, you say, the birds in the sky always hustle for sustenance. The fish in the sea worry themselves dull over tomorrow’s catch. The rush is contagious— I had to omit […]
If you make the connection between this table and that table, then you will remember your grandmother’s loaves of bread and from there you arrive outside the gates of Jerusalem. Your jealous and unkind aunt Virginia, who is six years older than you , has made it a rule that you must look at each […]
by Ruth Stone “Tremble,” says the sword-grass, leaning over the water. “Oh yes,” the water-fractals sing, writhing in temporal ecstasy, “Toward is inevitable. Fall to the center.” “Rushing, always rushing,” sighs the larch, brushing the sky. “Your roots are not deep enough. Try harder. Apply yourself.” On the milkweed, the larvae of the monarchs grow […]
by Elizabeth Bishop Thus should have been our travels: serious, engravable. The Seven Wonders of the World are tired and a touch familiar, but the other scenes, innumerable, though equally sad and still, are foreign. Often the squatting Arab, or group of Arabs, plotting, probably, against our Christian empire, while one apart, with outstretched arm […]
XXXV Have in your hold the great image And the empire will come to you. Coming to you and meeting with no harm It will be safe and sound. Music and food Will induce the wayfarer to stop. The way in its passage through the mouth is without flavour. It cannot be seen, It cannot […]
by Denise Levertov ‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’ -From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily. Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. But we are told of meek obedience. No […]
by George Seferis And yet we should consider how we go forward. To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move nor to put your body in danger in front of an old loophole when scalding oil and molten lead furrow the walls. And yet we should consider towards what we go forward, […]