July 1, 2004
Miracle Gro
I was finishing one book about ghosts and about to start another about ghosts while she slept. “If life is ordinary, so is death,” our sister (soon my sister) told […]
July 1, 2004
Ötzi
I sing of the fake claim to history —the counterfeit tree that says one’s root is royal, or holy, or indisputably native, and therefore so is the current flowering of […]
July 1, 2004
The Spices
No, it’s not “the painting”—not the noun of it— that serves now to remind her of her day. In fact the scene in its frame, the scene in all its […]
July 1, 2004
Foil
Lawrence Lebduska, folk artist, painting to please himself, 1961, afterfame and subsequent institutionalization Lebduska makes fun of a painter, A “genius” By the painter’s own reckoning, Who makes mild […]
July 1, 2004
Plans for a Garden
The seed, soil, sun, and leaf, And any flourishes to follow, start In the gardener’s mind, often confused with the heart. Imagined pistils are brought into relief Consciously, unencumbered by […]
July 1, 2004
To the Poet on the Matter of Flowers
From the French. For M. Théodore de Banville I. And so to Lilies! Pessaries of ecstasy, Forever tending to an azure black Where topaz seas vibrate, serving Their purposes in […]
July 1, 2004
Arisings
I was right about the hawk (only that it was one)—its field whispered at the same time listen and hush as if to be not speaking was not enough— a […]
July 1, 2004
From the Third Georgic: Lines 179-208
From the Latin. But if what you have in mind for your horse, instead, Is war and the proud fierce cavalry or else Racing your gliding flying chariot Along […]
July 1, 2004
Night Flight
I made friends with a dead sparrow I found on the sidewalk, rigid in the center of a carved heart. I groomed it scrupulously. The only blood was a fleck […]
July 1, 2004
Survivors
The one we loved lay trapped under the tower and we heard tapping, first late at night, then in the silence between sirens, then always in that city half-deserted at […]
July 1, 2004
Turning to the Page
I remember that cavernous silence after my first declaration of love, then, feeling I must have been misunderstood, saying it again, and, years later, with someone else, exclaiming, “That was […]
April 1, 2004
The Composition of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ Followed in Mid-April by ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
Coooee. Mama says what’s the point. I guess she has been to town lots longer, like she says, but I don’t know. He seems so sweet sometimes. He asked me […]