has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.
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Poetry is a kind of lying,
or beauty. But also inthat truth may be told only so.Those who, admirably, refuseto falsify (as those who will notrisk pretensions) are excludedfrom saying even so much.Degas said he didn’t paintwhat he saw, but whatwould enable them to seethe thing he had.
Going Wrong
The fish are dreadful. They are brought upthe mountain in the dawn most days, beautifuland alien and cold from night under the sea,the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes.Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,washing them. ‘What can you know of my machinery!’demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietlyand cuts into them,…
There is always the harrowing by mortality,
Sorrows come like epidemics. But we are alivein the difficult way adults want to be alive.It is worth having the heart broken,a blessing to hurt for eighteen yearsbecause a woman is dead. He thinks of longbefore that, the summer he was with Giannaand her sister in Apulia. Having outwittedthe General, their father, and driven southto…
Suddenly this defeat.
The blues gone grayAnd the browns gone grayAnd yellowA terrible amber.In the cold streetsYour warm body.In whatever roomYour warm body.Among all the peopleYour absenceThe people who are alwaysNot you.I have been easy with treesToo long.Too familiar with mountains.Joy has been a habit.NowSuddenlyThis rain.Anonymous submission.
When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
The miracle beast deserved such ritualthat to care for him properly meant ruin.Yet to care for him improperly was worse.It appears the gift could not be refused.
In the small towns along the river
Summer weeks stalled forever,and long marriages always the same.Lives with only emergencies, births,and fishing for excitement. Then a shipcomes out of the mist. Or comes aroundthe bend carefully one morningin the rain, past the pines and shrubs.Arrives on a hot fragrant night,grandly, all lit up. Gone two dayslater, leaving fury in its wake.