Writings

Artifact

Published in The Gates (1976) When this hand is gone to earth, this writing hand and the paper beneath it, long gone, and the words on the paper forgotten, and the breath that slowly curls around earth with its old spoken words gone into lives unborn and they too gone to earth— and their memory, memory of any of these gone, and all who remembered them absorbed in air and dirt, words, earth, breeze over the oceans, all these now other, there may as in the past be something left, some artifact.   This pen.   Will it tell my? [...]

2022-01-31T16:29:38+00:00January 31, 2022|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

I Make my Magic

Published in Houdini (2002) I make my magic Of forgotten things Night and nightmare and the midnight wings Of childhood butterflies— And the darkness, the straining dark Underwater and under sleep— Night and a heartbreak try to keep Myself, until before my eyes The morning sunlight pours And I am clear of all the chains And the magic now that rains Down around me is A sunlight magic, I come to a sunlight magic, Yours.

2023-09-04T17:20:49+00:00January 27, 2022|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

First Elegy: Rotten Lake

Originally published in A Turning Wind (1939) As I went down to Rotten Lake I remembered the wrecked season, haunted by plans of salvage, snow, the closed door, footsteps and resurrections, machinery of sorrow. The warm grass gave to the feet and the stilltide water was floor of evening and magnetic light and reflection of wish, the black-haired beast with my eyes walking beside me. The green and yellow lights, the street of water standing point to the image of that house whose destruction I weep when I weep you. My door (no), poems, rest, (don’t say it!) untamable need. [...]

2023-09-04T17:27:44+00:00January 15, 2021|Long Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Waiting for Icarus

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge of a new relation He said he would never again cringe before his father He said that he was going to invent full-time He said he loved me that going into me He said was going into the world and the sky He said all the buckles were very firm He said the wax was the best wax He said Wait for me here on the beach [...]

2020-10-12T20:58:36+00:00October 12, 2020|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

The Soul and Body of John Brown

Originally published in Beast in View (1944) Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! Joel III : 14 His life is in the body of the living. When they hanged him the first time, his image leaped into the blackened air. His grave was the floating faces of the crowd, and he refusing them release rose open-eyed to autumn, a fanatic beacon of fierceness leaping to meet them there, match the white prophets of the storm, the streaming meteors of the war. Dreaming Ezekiel, threaten me alive! Voices: Why don't you rip up that guitar? Or must we listen to [...]

2019-12-29T19:01:26+00:00December 29, 2019|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Anemone

Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) You are looking into me with your waking look. My eyes are closing, my eyes are opening My mouth is closing, my mouth is opening. You are waiting with your red promises. My sex is closing, my sex is opening. You are singing and offering : the way in. My life is closing, my life is opening. You are here. “Anemone,” by Thaerigen. Image in the Creative Commons, https://pixabay.com/en/anemone-water-sea-anemone-2874006

2019-02-10T12:51:15+00:00February 1, 2019|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

St. Roach

Originally published in The Gates (1976) For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you, for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth, they showed me by every action to despise your kind; for that I saw my people making war on you, I could not tell you apart, one from another, for that in childhood I lived in places clear of you, for that all the people I knew met you by crushing you, stamping you to death, they poured boiling water on you, they flushed you down, for that I could [...]

2018-12-07T20:36:50+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Reading Time: 1 Minute 26 Seconds

Originally Published in A Turning Wind (1939) The fear of poetry is the fear : mystery and fury of a midnight street of windows whose low voluptuous voice issues, and after that there is no peace. The round waiting moment in the theatre : curtain rises, dies into the ceiling and here is played the scene with the mother bandaging a revealed son's head. The bandage is torn off. Curtain goes down. And here is the moment of proof. That climax when the brain acknowledges the world, all values extended into the blood awake. Moment of proof. And as they [...]

2019-01-20T19:22:10+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments
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