October 1, 1983
Charles Darwin on Music
[Music] arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have not seen […]
October 1, 1983
The Passing Fancy Man
Impressive is the word for him, smarter than a husband, a visiting professor of life, urbane, conjectured to be good in bed. Younger than many, he is ruefully experienced; on […]
October 1, 1983
The Ram’s Story
The shepherd who cut me out of my dead dam Bore me among the rocks and at a spring Washed off the tell-tale blood, then left the lamb To gambol […]
October 1, 1983
Dying Boy by Artificial Lake
He lay on his bed of August, hearing the motorboats roar in and out of his fever. His mother stared from the door. The flowers were full of light. He […]
October 1, 1981
High May
God and the devil dance amid the flowers. The air has the rank smell of sweet oat stalks. Revel and high riot soil the warm hours. The little capers wield […]
October 1, 1981
The Multicolored Man
There is a multicolored man. They come up around him. They seize a ragged corner of his membranes (and who has not a ragged corner in his time?) An iridescent […]
October 1, 1981
Heroes
Like a dark sweet pudding rum butter melting in its moist cracks my life is wholesome to me. My hale floor shines. Bach beams from the brown speakers, the fire […]
October 1, 1981
A Valediction
When I am gone I fear that you’ll change. With Daniel, a faun if ever I knew one, you’ll fade into the woodlands like the nightingale. And when I return […]
April 1, 1981
Dante in Exile
Dante wrote his wife, Gemma, about his garden in spring which grew double-breasted roses & plum trees big as oaks, but this was in Ravenna, where he lived in exile […]
April 1, 1981
Interior with Arches: After Piranesi
Despair has never been better fitted to the human eye. Archimedes with all his fancy levers couldn’t have done gravity more honor, but Piranesi wanted more than desultory grandeur. I […]
April 1, 1981
Shane
There was no moon & the horizon a fire breaking over the black earth & the man on horseback floated into the red plum of the sky & did not […]
April 1, 1981
Pumpernickel
Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye, onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for, pumpernickel that stank up the neighborhood & for […]