More on: Poetry

Knowing life grinds us, And dust Is what we’ll become. Sensing, likewise, That the moral Of our story Has to do With being mortal. Yet love grounds us. And the beloved Grows in us: We are her slow cocoon. And the poem is a door; The song, a little window. § Bowed by a ceaseless…

i In the eyes of Dürer’s Saint Jerome, desert inhabits the dark flecks of his downward gaze. It harrowed him. He came back clean as picked bone. Chalcis of sunlight, and sand— only in the eyes can days be counted, days of muscle wasting, in which desire dwindled to the body’s dry growl. He’s written…

Stirring among the pines. The sapling’s leaves like oval wings tremble. Between the whoofs of startled deer, echoing, an echoing clear creed of some unvanquished mystery— night-rising crows humbling their caws below the oaky whoo of the boreal owl. Below that, what? Threads of wood, a bed of pine, the needles strewn in love beside…

After love discovers it, the little burn or birthmark in some odd spot he can neither see nor reach; after the internist’s downturned mouth, specialists leaning over him like diviners, machines reading his billion cells; after the onslaught of insight, cures crawling through him like infestations, so many surgeries a wrong move leaves him leaking…

The light falling on the steps of city hall this late afternoon infuses the whole sky and bathes these poor little trees of heaven stuck in concrete. Flooding down from all sides, light slants across ruddy storefront brick, streaks along cables, glitters up from the bay, and now, as I turn west toward the hospital,…

I was stopped on the sidewalk by pears glowing on their tree like antique ornaments with flaking paint, a green metallic shimmer, hinting at yellow, mottled with a few flecks of red. As light flickered over them, they seemed to flutter like candles in the leaves. But no—they were pears, and probably hard, I told…

Nehemiah is pacing the streets at first light examining the builders’ progress and picturing the work that lies ahead. He then gets out of bed, puts on his clothes, and leaves the house to pace the streets, gravely nodding in greeting at the first workmen as they begin to appear; he pauses, suppressing a smile,…

Each day, for years, it gets up at first light, lets the dove out and stands in the doorway looking at the soft blue Arkansas sky without waking. But never you mind, it will be packing its small suitcase soon, it will leave the keys dangling from the lock and set out at last. Across…

Each day I woke as it started to get dark, and the pain came. Month after month of this—who knows when I got well. With dawn, now, waking from the rampage of sleep, I am walking in the Lincoln woods. A single bird is loudly singing. And I walk here as I always have, as…

Now the lone swan dips groundward and her wings beat more slowly, the scrape of oak limbs wicking the air beneath her breast, the arms of oaks open and out, a narrow hall between their reaching (this the route through which the trees’ separateness wavers and grows tense). She is a clutter of feather, vision,…