II Alone
Sustained by poetry, fed anew
by its fires to return from madness,
the void does not beckon as it used to.
Littered with syllables, the road does not loom
as a chasm. The hand of strangers on other
doors does not hurt, the breath of gods
does not desert, but looms large
as a dream, a prairie within our dream,
to which we return, when we need to.
Oh blessed plain, oh pointed chasm.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.
John Wieners
John Wieners lived on the periphery of several movements during his lifetime—the Beats, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, the San Francisco Renaissance—and was granted cult status in the poetry community.