July 1, 1987
A Momentary Order
He’s spent this long hot morningin my neighbor’s yard. Where weedswere so thick their thin stalks hauledgrowing clumps of earth alongboth sides of walks and their rootsstretched the limits of […]
July 1, 1987
On Thinking about Gilbert White in Our Nuclear Age
Just behind the houseon a path which followsthe stone wall, the lineof oaks, I walk each eveningtowards the river. Again,as every year. I take notes,look for nests, checkfledgling leaves for […]
October 1, 1986
Oedipus
Once he had unriddled the Sphinxshe was finished, I guess,though not bodily, not the powerfulthighs, the lion-thighsof the women … So then it was the fathers.Some cities got built. Some […]
July 1, 1986
The Garden and the Sea: An Essay for Helen
I The poem beginsin a garden at nightfall—two lovers courteouslytaking their leavehaving studied the old booksin which love is so intricateit takes the turningof a thousand pagesto pluck the rose […]
April 1, 1986
Deep Fishing
Poetry is like fishing,If you have six hooksOn a line one hundred feet down What you have to doIs wait for carp to strike,A mystery of no feeling. Haul up […]
April 1, 1986
Shrubs Burned Away
What then are the situations, from the representation of which, though accurate, no poetical enjoyment can be derived? They are those in which the suffering finds no vent in action; […]
April 1, 1986
From Small Beginnings…
Buds into stars. A Milky Way just of daisies, down this Fen Meadow,scattered in a single morning, weather snowy with warmth; and if you look for causes, smalleffects have (reversing the proverb) […]
January 1, 1986
Monet’s “Peace under the Lilacs”
We imagine a breeze, then the momentThe breeze stops, the lilacs stillSwaying, but ever so little,The air clear of everythingExcept the recovered innocence of lilacScenting the air, spreading its largess,The […]
October 1, 1985
Last Holy Fragrance
In Memoriam James Wright When by first light I went outfrom the last house on the chemin de Riouto start up the cistern pump, there he sat,mumbling into his notebook […]
October 1, 1985
A Photograph by August Sander (Young Girl in a Circus Wagon, Düren, 1932)
Even in this grey light the nail heads sing. Even beneath this weather something falls not quite daylight and not yet wholly darkness. Admittedly, we have been given little, beyond […]
July 1, 1985
Against the Meanwhile
To David St. John Point Nine I Memory—hardly through the dusk do the letters of that word break. A boy calls his brother. What the other boy walking home thinks […]
January 1, 1985
Honeymoon, All Soul’s
“See, my life is a kind of distraction and dispersal . . . I have been spilled and scattered among times whose order I do not know.” SAINT AUGUSTINE I […]