Wake Up, Mario by Martín Espada For Mario Gonzalez Arenales (1994-2021) He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just scaring my wife.—call to the Alameda Police Department, April 19, 2021 They watched him from the window of the house, a man at the fencein a crooked wool cap, chipping at their tree with a comb,…
This morning the sun was a fingernail of fire above the treeline across the river. This poem was on my mind. Life is a siege, sometimes a pitched battle against the darkness that surely will envelop our dreams — unless you, unless I resist. As we grow older, it happens. The ancient contest between…
More from East Coker by T. S. Eliot winner of the Nobel prize for literature… In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing…
I In my beginning is my end. In successionHouses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their placeIs an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earthWhich is already flesh, fur and…
Canticle By Wendell Berry What death means is not this – the spirit, triumphant in the body’s fall, praising its absence, feeding on music. If life can’t justify and explain itself, death can’t justify and explain it. A creed and a grave never did equal life of anything. Yellow flowers sprout in the clefts…
Late Lament Breathe deep the gathering gloom,Watch lights fade from every room.Bedsitter people look back and lament,Another day’s useless energy spent.Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.Lonely man cries for love and has none.New mother picks up and suckles her son.Senior citizens wish they were young.Cold-hearted orb that rules the nightRemoves the colours from our sight.Red…
In the Meantime By Max Garland The river rose wildly every seventh spring or so, and down the hatch went the town, just a floating hat box or two, a cradle, a cellar door like an ark to float us back into the story of how we drown but never for good, or long….
My Brain Is Mad for Baudrillard By Elizabeth Knapp Today, I read of scientists’ warnings about the potential dangers of sex robots and thought of you. Some blame the rise of right-wing populism on postmodern windbags like you, holed up in your university office, giving head to your shadow. But Jean, you were right—…
Waiting for Your Call by Aria Aber The light retreats and is generous again.No you to speak of, anywhere—neither in vicinity nor distance, so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers shaking in the wind, the lake—no, I am lying. There are no egrets here, no water….
THE DRY SALVAGES (No. 3 of ‘Four Quartets’) I I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder…
