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The Author to His Body on Their Fifteenth Birthday, 29 ii 80
© Howard Nemerov
“There’s never a dull moment in the human body.”
—The Insight Lady
Mingus in Diaspora
© William Matthews
You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out,
like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon,
or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost,
who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus.
Obsessive
© Marvin Bell
It could be a clip, it could be a comb;
it could be your mother, coming home.
It could be a rooster; perhaps it’s a comb;
it could be your father, coming home.
It could be a paper; it could be a pin.
It could be your childhood, sinking in.
The War in the Air
© Howard Nemerov
For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
In the clean war, the war in the air.
Sad Wine (I)
© Cesare Pavese
It was beautiful how he cried as he told it,
the way a drunk cries, his whole body to it,
and he hung on my shoulder saying, Between us,
always respect, and there I was, shaking with cold,
wanting to leave, and helping him walk.
Parable of the Hostages
© Louise Gluck
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
Butchers
© C. K. Williams
1
Thank goodness we were able to wipe the Neanderthals out, beastly things,
The Ragpickers' Wine
© Charles Baudelaire
In the muddy maze of some old neighborhood,
Often, where the street lamp gleams like blood,
As the wind whips the flame, rattles the glass,
Where human beings ferment in a stormy mass,
The Evening Wind
© William Cullen Bryant
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That coolst the twilight of the sultry day,
Destitute Peru
© James Schuyler
For John Ashbery
We pullmaned to Peoria. Was
Gladys glad, Skippy missed
Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home.
“I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.”
How Things Work
© Gary Soto
Today it’s going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
This Lime-tree Bower my Prison
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[Addressed to Charles Lamb, of the India House, London]
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
In the Past
© Trumbull Stickney
There lies a somnolent lake
Under a noiseless sky,
Where never the mornings break
Nor the evenings die.
Hotel François 1er
© Gertrude Stein
It was a very little while and they had gone in front of it. It was that they had liked it would it bear. It was a very much adjoined a follower. Flower of an adding where a follower.
Have I come in. Will in suggestion.
They may like hours in catching.
It is always a pleasure to remember.
Midsummer
© Louise Gluck
On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry,
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off ?the girls’ clothes
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer
and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones
leaping off ?the high rocks — bodies crowding the water.
Boundary Issues
© John Ashbery
Here in life, they would understand.
How could it be otherwise? We had groped too,
unwise, till the margin began to give way,
at which point all was sullen, or lost, or both.
The Bearer
© Hayden Carruth
Like all his people he felt at home in the forest.
The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there,
