Spirit Has a Beginning

1927 –

Although there’s no Director of the Scenes
working especially for me, I bet
what happens is for good. Forgot my jeans
in Hong Kong; on a marble hill in Crete
I left a lens. Yesterday in Nepal
a boy got my glasses. Why do I lose
my things? Alms to the cosmos? When I fall
in love, it lasts a life, but I confuse
my lover, lose her, and walk for years
on fire. It’s good. Rain will surprise my heart
one day before I die. Theologies
despise possessions, and I feel no tears
for things—though lost love replays death. Yet these
words come because I lose. Loss is a start.

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Mount Sinai Hospital. My mother lay
in a good corner room with lots of sun.
The surgeon traced the steps of her death dance.
A soldier then, I’d flown in from France
where in Périgueux’s children’s ward, one day
I saw a young girl in a coma. Sun
came through glass walls; the child was beautiful,

Willis Barnstone

2015

Gospel of Clouds

On cloudy Sundays clouds are in my heart
as if my brother came, as if the rain
lingered among the mushrooms and the art
of freedom washed into the murder train
or rinsed the peat bog soldiers of the camp.¹
On cloudy Sundays clouds are with Joe Hill.
Last night I dreamt he was alive. The tramp

Willis Barnstone

2015

The Good

On the first morning of the moon, in land
under the birds of Ur, before the flood
dirties the memory of a couple banned
from apples and the fatal fire of blood,
Adam and Eve walk in the ghetto park,
circling a tree. They do not know the way
to make their bodies shiver in the spark

Willis Barnstone

2015

Poems

Spirit Has a Beginning

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

Poems

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Spirit Has a Beginning

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

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