Endnote

The great poems of our elders in many tongues we struggled to comprehend who are now content with mystery simple and profound you in the night your breath your body orbit of time and the moment you Phosphorus and Hesper a dark circle of fertility so bloodthirsty for us you in the world the night breathing asleep and alive.

Emergency Haying

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,

my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 500 bales we've put up

this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn

by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed.

Hayden Carruth

2006

Regarding Chainsaws

The first chainsaw I owned was years ago,
an old yellow McCulloch that wouldn't start.
Bo Bremmer give it to me that was my friend,
though I've had enemies couldn't of done
no worse. I took it to Ward's over to Morrisville,
and no doubt they tinkered it as best they could,
but it still wouldn't start.

Hayden Carruth

2006

Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets

Masters, the mock orange is blooming in Syracuse without
       scent, having been bred by patient horticulturalists
To make this greater display at the expense of fragrance.
But I miss the jasmine of my back-country home.
Your language has no tenses, which is why your poems can
       never be translated whole into English;
Your minds are the minds of men who feel and imagine
       without time.
The serenity of the present, the repose of my eyes in the cool
       whiteness of sterile flowers.
Even now the headsman with his great curved blade and rank
       odor is stalking the byway

Hayden Carruth

2006

Poems

Endnote

More by this poet

Emergency Haying

Regarding Chainsaws

Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets

Poems

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Endnote

More by this poet

Emergency Haying

Regarding Chainsaws

Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets

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