Don’t beckon yet!…
By Poetry Issue 65
Through the gates of eternity I’ll ride On a grasshopper huge and green. ————————–—Egils Plaudis don’t beckon yet! I don’t yet want to ride to you on the back of a huge grasshopper I still want to linger here among various earthly substances still want to see how the wind sweeps away slogan after slogan…
Read MoreThree Small Elegies, on Leaving Gotland
By Poetry Issue 65
1 the droning dies down, the sea steps back, leaving salt on stone foreheads, on the years’ shells and that which we so stubbornly call poetry. come, sit here, on this wind and wave crumbled shore and let’s be silent for so long, till night lowers eyelids on the open sea and no one remembers…
Read MoreGreater Solitude
By Poetry Issue 65
My words verge on silence like great birds that disappear into the early evening: their strenuous white wings carry off the intense sweetness of dusk, visible then in starlight. My words turn toward the night with no look back at what is lost or won, or what is missing, like those workers, who, utterly fatigued…
Read MoreYou Enter That Light
By Poetry Issue 65
You enter that light which binds night and day, that swirling mist of pain, fortunate pain, which has no need to be seen. It shimmers on the ever-present, ever- inactual shore. Simple worker, like those who build men’s houses— Breathe life into the whirlwind where the dead shall find you, dear friends absorbed in daylight.…
Read MoreThe Earth
By Poetry Issue 65
Matter, mother, Maria Names that come from the beginning With tractor or dragged plow or pick, shovel, spade, hoe, black, reddish, parched, mud-caked, the earth is hard to break. Men labor over it as over a woman virgin even after giving birth, laboring as on a sea whose waves close above him—foam, blossom—as men work…
Read MoreThey Went On and On…
By Poetry Issue 65
They went on and on, singing “In Memory Forever,” Though it seemed, rather, that what there was to remember Was only things falling apart, ice under the eaves, And the singing itself. On and on they went as they counted, recalling How many of them earth’s ice-mold had covered, While here and there hysterical women…
Read MorePoetic Creed
By Poetry Issue 65
In 1907, at forty-three years of age, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo published his first book of poetry, titled simply Poesías (Poems). Already well known in Spain as a prominent intellectual and the rector of the University of Salamanca, by this time Unamuno had produced novels, essays, and works of philosophy. Yet in the verse…
Read MoreThe Cathedral of Barcelona
By Poetry Issue 65
In 1907, at forty-three years of age, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo published his first book of poetry, titled simply Poesías (Poems). Already well known in Spain as a prominent intellectual and the rector of the University of Salamanca, by this time Unamuno had produced novels, essays, and works of philosophy. Yet in the verse…
Read MorePilgrimage
By Short Story Issue 65
SHE HAD A CHOICE: she could have flown to Boston to make a proper farewell. Gene was sure of it. “He’s in a very loving state these days, Melanie. Very weak, very thin, very loving. You’d hardly recognize him. I know it would mean a lot if you came.” But she couldn’t. They were fifteen…
Read MoreDivine Wrath
By Poetry Issue 65
When I was wounded whether by God, the devil, or myself —I don’t know yet which— it was seeing the sparrows again and clumps of clover, after three days, that told me I hadn’t died. When I was young, all it took were those sparrows, those lush little leaves, for me to sing praises, dedicate…
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