Poetry
For My Poems, Written So Early For my poems, written so early That I didn’t even know I was a poet, Hurled like drops from a fountain, Like sparks from rockets, That burst like tiny …
The Stalin Epigram Our lives no longer feel ground under them. At ten paces you can’t hear our words. But whenever there’s a snatch of talk it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer, the ten thick …
The Tram That Lost Its Way I walked an unfamiliar street And suddenly heard a raven’s cry, And the sound of a lute, and distant thunder,— In front of me a tram was flying. How …
Memory of Sun Memory of sun seeps from the heart. Grass grows yellower. Faintly if at all the early snowflakes Hover, hover. Water becoming ice is slowing in The narrow channels. Nothing at all will …
As It Was in the Beginning The royal word goes forth, and armies do The work of devils. Agony and waste Are on the world, and the grim legions haste On the old war-roads that …
Alfred Moir Why was I not devoured by self-contempt, And rotted down by indifference And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? Why, with all of my errant steps Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? …
Heart of Gold It is only with the heart that we can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. – Saint-Exupery Get to the heart of the matter The eternal cry of …
Self-Criticism in February The bay is not blue but sombre yellow With wrack from the battered valley, it is speckled with violent foam-heads And tiger-striped with long lovely storm-shadow. You love this better than the …
Silence There are some qualities—some incorporate things, That have a double life, which thus is made A type of that twin entity which springs From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade. There is …
A Winter’s Night When biting Boreas, fell and doure, Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r; When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r, Far south the lift, Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r, Or whirling drift: Ae night …
Consider a life in the time it takes your phone to wink dark *** On the prison camp raining and then not raining *** September... he yawns like a lion with his frosty beard *** …
January The days are short, The sun a spark, Hung thin between The dark and dark. Fat snowy footsteps Track the floor. Milk bottles burst Outside the door. The river is A frozen place Held …
-For Cecilia A spirited play for words, like a December wind punching your breath Back down through your esophagus; a resolute sense of commitment Like the bold disregard maple, chicory, and sumac pay at summer’s …
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes – Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and …
Toward the Winter Solstice Although the roof is just a story high, It dizzies me a little to look down. I lariat-twirl the rope of Christmas lights And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown; …
The Past The form of the poem subsided, it enters another poem. A witness was found for the markings inscribed upside-down. It might have been a celebration, so strong the presence of the poem. The …