The Map (audio only)
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Does exile begin at birth? I lived beside a wide river
For so long I stopped hearing it.
As when a glass shatters during an argument,
And we are secretly thrilled. . . . We wanted it to break.
Always something missing now in the cry of one bird,
Its wings flared against the wood.
Still, everything that is singular has a name:
Stone, song, trembling, waist, & snow. I remember how
My old psychiatrist would pinch his nose between
A thumb & forefinger, look up at me & sigh.
2016
The brow of a horse in that moment when The horse is drinking water so deeply from a trough It seems to inhale the water, is holy. I refuse to explain. When the horse had gone the water in the trough, All through the empty summer, Went on reflecting clouds & stars. The horse cropping grass in a field, And the fly buzzing around its eyes, are more real Than the mist in one corner of the field. Or the angel hidden in the mist, for that matter. Members of the Committee on the Ineffable, Let me illustrate this with a story, & ask you all To rest your heads on the table, cushi
1997
My love and I are inventing a country, which we can already see taking shape, as if wheels were passing through yellow mud. But there is a prob- lem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw and begin flooding. If we put the river on the bor- der, there will be trouble. If we forget about the river, there will be no way out. There is already a sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke. Birds have flown into it, too.
1977