Emily Wilson

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Pastoral

The mordants in their noise,the night transports. A means of coming tothe switchyard of the tongue. To have onceset such store by forced creatures.Not changed toward something of my own.The towns raised chaffed seas to ground them.In that frieze before storm you went on.Effigy loomed out of cornfield. Futureinside its trussed forms.

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Small Study

Sparrows swiveling the feederso the seed whorlsso the dove can come from its fixin the waver of cedars.Some one makes a husk notethat a pair can flare into as ifbuilt from that scutchof the undergrowth—roughening birds, birds skimming intoslits they fit into in trees betweenloads of the branches—through pathsthrough encampmentgo dozens who work the steep…

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Red-Legged Kittiwake

Native it seems to no partof the North American continentbut some islets offthe rugged scarps of the Aleutiansin the loose entablatured cliffsamong dwarf-willow tips.Known if at all by its silhouette(we can know such things by their silhouettes)the red-legged kittiwakeglimpsed in isolate parts of OregonCalifornia and southern Nevadasaid to go silent in winterslitting through snowthe red-legged…

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A Friend Like You

A friend like you toBe there by my side when others areCriticizing me andDoubting me. You are there with meEvery step of the way. I’m glad to have aFriend like you. Even though you areGone, you’ll always be missed. And sometimes it getsHard without you here, butI remember the times we shared together and that’sJust…

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The Keep

Is this a kind of progress? This slip-beadmorning through which the rains keepmissing only the scarcely illuminated treadof clover at the heels of swart pines. Sleepcounters me both ways. I fail to advancein my own precession by the darkcalendar needles. I will not advancebut by the strange calamities that workas on shallops on calmed water,…

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Nonesuch

You come from unquietcountry into roomsthe marshes empty toat low tide. Region of seed kind. Its terracessecreted in rivers.The implicate systemyou live in or that which is all the while here unrendersitself, a civility of capture and let run.You are wondrousin a fundament of greens.Unknown but you are.

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Houses Among Us

Houses among us.Houses making the fieldsgrow leathery at dusk.Who are the rivers. Who are the passagewaysoutbranching from the commonantique vestibule the sameas it is in heaven. A wall that is leaning afterward.A clawfoot tub that holdsitself like a boargiving birth in a basement. A house inside youbeat of tin.A house inside mestiff with clove.

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Geomantic

Spruce of the darkOntarian orchards,spoor of the interior,I emerge into uncalculatedgrain shattering at the crown. As the sky answersagainst the watercourse,so I take my fewexceptions with God.Nothing so irredeemableas the robber cowbird,as the slump of the fisherunraveling its host. The great brains of the beechesdivest themselves so sparingly.I will outstay everythingfor the seasonal observance.Dried silicles,…

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The Sky Is The Lost Orpheum

The shelter of it carved, cavedAcross the river, the park and the little Ferris wheelclosed downThe great oaks emptying, russet, gussetedthe hovering slant light leaking from the outer edgeof cloud bedleads and shawls pulled forthThy synchrony of the lost elements recoveredthe shivering water surfaces, planar unmeldings, remeldings,riverine alchemies, unlocketed selvesnow the reemergence, the sun pouring…