July 1, 1982
From the Kossovo Fragments: The Mother of the Jugovici
From the Serbian. Dear God! How great the wonder of it all— When the army fell on level Kossovo With all the Jugovici in its ranks— Nine brave brothers and […]
July 1, 1982
Our Journey to Ghent
for Peter Taste brass in the air. Imagine our kin who haunt the borders. Their ribs, their backs, their shrunken sex and knucklebones the weight inside my coat. All night […]
July 1, 1982
A Crone’s Tale
for Françoise Krampf Tell you of the witch? Well, so I will, child, as well as ever I remember the story. Now the witch was an ordinary girl and not […]
July 1, 1982
In Old San Juan
l've come to visit Doña Trina,to pay respects and receive my blessing.At the kitchen table under the great clockwhere an elegy is always ticking,this is me sitting mute in the […]
July 1, 1982
Horse-Trading
for Henri Coulette Either the track or the glue factory, he got both, but the image of the horsecock hanging there at eye level is all she ever got of […]
July 1, 1982
Imago
The fulcrum of America is the plains, half sea half land. Charles Olson There is no Middle West. It is a certain climate, a certain landscape, and beyond that, a […]
July 1, 1982
Rain at Bellagio
1 The omnipresence of the sound of water: rain on the graveled walks, the lakeside terraces, the red pantiles of Bellagio. At Paestum we had not heard it. An acreage […]
July 1, 1982
For My Father
I look over the old photos for the U S Hotel fire, 1900 Saratoga Springs, where your grandfather was chef on loan from Catskill where you were bon. The grapes […]
July 1, 1982
Memorial Meetings
for Robert Hayden, 1913-1980 Clearing your throat at the high-falutin' antics of friends, in the first public light (hidden confrontations, admissions, confessions)—the jazz band could not play, locked out of […]
July 1, 1982
Marathon
Across the green which lifts and falls like ocean, like St Mark's mosaic floor whose gilded earth the sea buckles and swells, turning on Venice that same supple force she […]
July 1, 1982
The Dissolution of the Rainbow
By an extraordinary combination of circumstances, the theory of colors has been drawn into the province and before the tribunal of the mathematician, a tribunal to which it cannot be […]
July 1, 1982
The Eyes
A colored psychoanalyst? Sorry. You want me to sit here? You look half-Jewish. My wife's friend Belle nudged me to come. I hope You're not a Muslim. Do you have […]