July 1, 1982
To My Younger Self
So there you are: twenty, hands on your hips,Squinting at the sun. Dressed in a white shirtAnd purple cashmere sweater, you sniff the Spring airFor death, merely to write a […]
July 1, 1982
Olympia
The marble stumps, the plundered archeology of games— the foot race, the hippodrome, the chariot on the racetrack; the fox-and-geese-track in the schoolyard snow; the footprints of the weasel and […]
July 1, 1982
Ode to Desire
What rage, our bodies twisted like wires in the brain's switchboard, hurt plugged to joy, need to despair, how it happens so quickly, this entering of another's soul like molecules […]
July 1, 1982
For My Mother
The hand of peace you sent from Israelhangs on my wall like an ironic testamentto the one quality we have never shared.I imagine you peering into that ancient vistaas if […]
July 1, 1982
A Guide for the Perplexed
One madman laughs at another, and they each give enjoyment to one another. If you watch closely, you will see that the maddest one gets the biggest laugh. ERASMUS There's […]
July 1, 1982
A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Times
Thomas Tomkins, his elegy for William Lawes, 1649 And now the world you loved turns out of season, The best of trees lies wind-blown. The King is dead. Law and […]
July 1, 1982
The Reedbeds of the Hackensack
Scummed maunderings that nothing loves but reeds, Phragmites, neighbors of the greeny asphodel that thrive among the windings of the Hackensack, collaborating to subvert the altogether ugly if too down-to-earth […]
July 1, 1982
Caesarion
A glow of cells in the warm Sea, Some vaguest green or violet soup Took a few billion days to loop The loops we called eternity. Before the splendor bit […]
July 1, 1982
From the Space Sonnets
I would like you to walk into a science fiction painting. There is a huge monastery at its center, built around a gigantic telescope. The road you are on approaches […]
July 1, 1982
Grape Sherbet
The day? Memorial. After the grill Dad appears with his masterpiece— swirled snow, gelled light. We cheer. The recipe's a secret and he fights a smile, his cap turned up […]
July 1, 1982
The Abortion
When they met her hands could cradle a fish.She could pluck his smallest hurtsLike barnacles from a baby's face.And when he betrayed her with a womanTwice her age and a […]
July 1, 1982
To V V: On Our Translation of the Kossovo Fragments
Vladeta the Voyvoda! knight who brings the news From Kossovo to gracious Militsa, Lazarus's queen, sister of the Jugovici, Daughter of Jug Bogdan— that's the stock you're made of! In […]