More on: Poetry

When I wander oblivious among the buildings I see future sacrifices emerge, I would like to adhere to some artifice, Rediscover hope through furniture shopping Or believe in Islam, feel a very gentle God Who would guide my feet, take me on holiday, I cannot forget that scent of departure Between our brusque words, our…

Evident duplicity of solitude. I see these old people seated around a table; there are at least ten of them. I could have fun counting them, but I am sure there are at least ten of them. And phwee! If only I could fly off to heaven, fly off to heaven straight away! —-As they…

Almost nothing happened and yet it is impossible to free —ourselves of the vertigo Something has begun to move, powers with which there is —no question of compromise, Like those of opium or Christ, the victims of love are —happy victims first of all And the life circulating in us this morning has just been…

Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.                 —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Tame me—you whom I can never see— ——-each word I utter, each prayer I kneel for. Here I am, pacing—now wrest from me ——-a new song to find its way to you. If you…

From cramped to roofless ——-I became—I don’t know how— ————–an open-air temple with no pillars. My walls of stone, lichen-covered, where many feet came to pray. ——-The willows shook around me ————–as mice and small insects knelt in moonlight, I could feel the breath of many spirits ——-winging through my chamber: ————–rabbis dropping pocket lint—…

The thing I did for sorrow was silence. The thing I did for sorrow, the thing I did, the silence. I thought when replacing the pillow under the sleeping girl’s head it’s been a while since kindness. When my mother was sick I didn’t go I rolled over in my own bed I thought she…

With more persistent stitchery I might breach the red intelligence of berries taking French-knot shapes among embroidered leaves, or bring a spirit hovering in the satin-stitch of a hummingbird’s small throat; while outlining a dragonfly I may divine its mythic origin in dragon—fiery, winged, then tricked into an insect’s form, but keeping flashes of the…

It takes a lifetime’s blindness to see one’s father.                                         —Cid Corman My father mumbled forth his violated commandments for half my life. I inscribed them on incense and holy water and when I drank them they tasted like cigarette ashes in a coca-cola can. There were no tablets save the pills he didn’t take.…

Out of exceeding gloom and out of God, I break a prayer from a growl and sing a hymn more ordinary than tap water. I pray that I might be more than my skin, this dance of atoms, this ritual of ash, this tribe of twilight and rattled angels, this pattern of epiphanies rejected. I…

It is a fact that no one worries in the Bible. —Adam Phillips i. She worried. & she knew. Good enough makes a faint halo. Still she was good enough. She let the infant dream his unbroken body at her nipple. She suckled him & waited as lightning struck. Often. His eyes clouded— ultramarine, gray…