Standing by a Shelf by Brandon D. Johnson for Reuben When he looks at the edges, The covers of books and records, He remembers when and where He got them, how it felt. Everything’s a testament To life lived on the fringe Of some sense of sanity. All the vehicles for imbibing These treasures…
High, Higher, Highest by Samuel Hazo Viewed from space, the world’s impersonal. France appears, but no Frenchmen. Then Germany, without…
Reinforcements Marianne Moore The vestibule to experience is not to Be exalted into epic grandeur. These men are goingTo their work with this idea, advancing like a school of fish through Still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss The idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the GreeksRing in our ears, but they…
How to Kill by Keith Douglas Under the parabola of a ball, a child turning into a man, I looked into the air too long. The ball fell in my hand, it sang in the closed fist: Open Open Behold a gift designed to kill. Now in my dial of glass appears the soldier…
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower By Rainer Maria Rilke Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change….
Yesterday I wondered if they celebrate February 14 as Valentine’s Day in Ukraine. I consulted the Oracle, no longer at Delphi. The answer: yes they do. That it is possible to celebrate love when surrounded by serried ranks of armor, self-propelled artillery, motorized infantry seemed a truly human image of resistance. We ought to…
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…
