Winter 2021/2022: Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review

The day’s glare almost stops you. The shade
is never dark enough. Head angles, re-angles
toward a dimmer oblique. One-eyed, you read through
the sinuous text, and lose all to the curves,
and every curve was there before
when you, the “European” girl, were fluent
in cat’s-eye glasses. Letters melted
like the Seine into the Seine.

You’re in blind spume now. Brightness floats,
ice crusts the text, and still
your eye curves through the long perfections.
The world’s remembered more than read,
yet read, it runs like goose fat over flame
and fries the raw light gold.

He is the pear before the leaf,
flower before the seed is sown.
She is the tear before the grief,
but he is the pear before the leaf.
She is the loss before the thief.
She is of him, but still her own.
He is the wreck before the reef.
She is the flesh before the stone.

She is the pear before the leaf,
harvest before the seed is sown.
He is the tear before the grief,
and she is the fall before the leaf.
She is the grain before the sheaf.
She is like him, but still her own.
He is the blight before the reef.
She is the grave before the bone.

Lord I have not written for
ninety-three days. Lord I am
in trouble now. Lord the words
go silent the way crickets
go silent as I walk near their tree,
and when I’ve moved on down the path
they cry out again, louder.
Like Rilke’s Orpheus they bear a harp
grafted to their limbs:
Lord I am in trouble, now
and then. Here is an image of a man
wearing a suit of crickets
and a woman with a gown of same
wearing their music on their sleeves,
gathered to them as iron filings
gather to a magnet swept
across the workshop floor
between the humming lathes. Admit
them, admit them. I would like
to know those angels’ names.