Certain Principles Must Be Observed (audio only)
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More by this poet
A Ghost
erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being time and so
the house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of a storm
The architect tore down room after room until the sound stopped. A ghost is one
among the ages at the edge of a cliff empty sails on the bay even when a ship
or the house moves off in fog asks you out loud to let the stranger in
2012
The Invention of Streetlights
noctes illustratas
(the night has houses)
and the shadow of the fabulous
broken into handfuls--these
can be placed at regular intervals,
candles
walking down streets at times eclipsed by trees.
Certain cells, it's said, can generate light on their own.
There are organisms that could fit on the head of a pin
and light entire rooms.
Throughout the Middle Ages, you could hire a man
on any corner with a torch to light you home
were lamps made of horn
and from above a2004
Chaïm Soutine: The Errant Road, 1939
as if a road could be otherwise but geometry
defies the man who is lost on the road that
the trees want to reach and reach down
to his walking on
along a verticality that defies
the requirements of normative perspective
and so he will reach, and the trees against chalk—
the gesture of the arm extended is central
to all Soutine’s work be it a branch or an ache
or a split of the face, going off. In this case
can you say that a man is lost just because
you cannot distinguish him from the background.
2016