Poetry
Spring 1999
The Good Grief
Three of us are quoting Father Hopkins over breakfast, fresh thoughts care for, can you? the poet breaking syntax over his knee, dry sticks for the fire. What heart heard […]
Poetry
Spring 1986
Heraclitus on Fire
Thales thought the world was water.Anaximenes said air—or rather aer, which is to saya mist or vapor. On any latespring morning in Miletus, thereit is, aer, hovering where the roaddips […]
Poetry
Spring 1986
On the Promontory
You can believe it on a day like thiswhen haze hangs on the islands and the seasmolders against the sky. Here on the headlands, the long blue swells ease in […]
Poetry
Spring 1986
Cretan Dawn: A Metaphor
After sunset, menin black pants, blacksweaters and scarves ranfrom streets back of the wharves, ranthe lost narrowpaths on the mountain,finding the shadow of rocks, keeping down.Now, the sun dropsits Aryanparatroops, […]
Poetry
Spring 1986
Talk
Talk Without the distraction of meaning, we notice the fact: talk. A table of Finns, two Greeks across a counter, a knot of Germans waiting for a bus—what could they […]
Mexican Poems
Spring 1982
Toads
Dusk comes suddenly on the narrow road that follows the hill eastward and down. The woman's fears are the live pieces of dark that appear where there was nothing. In […]
Mexican Poems
Spring 1982
The Cur
I The wild dogs in the road weave and smell among the stones like dry rivers prowling for rain. When they are gone, you say, "They will never find it, […]
Mexican Poems
Spring 1982
The Monkey
In Chiapas, at the edge of the rain, we begin to feel sick—nothing violent but an insinuation in the bowels. Don't drink the water, we tell each other. Don't eat […]