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Denial

She said it was a trial,
That I’d hear but wouldn’t know—
In this world I’m not a master,
So it’s silly for me to crow.
My ego brought on disaster:
She loathed me, I never knew;
So now I lie only with my dear—Denial.
 
 
The end rhyme scheme follows Frances Darwin Cornford’s poem, “The True Evil.”
 
 

Clouds Above

By Liu Yong (987-1053), Translated by Frank Watson
 
 
Clouds above the mountain top,
About the river of night and day;
Looking out at the meadow crop,
Her face arrayed in the misty spray.
 
A thousand autumns pass,
Leaving my eyes in a frozen state;
Looking to go home, at last,
I feel our life’s divided fate.
 
I gaze, but letters no longer console—
Their perfumed scent has faded;
I fly alone, without a soul,
A wild goose, unaided.
 
Landing on an islet, exposed
By autumn’s sinking tides—

Cold Wind


Many years ago, this day,
As lingering clouds
Brought out the morning rays,
I heard the east wind drown
In the sound of the ocean spray.
 
She came in nightly
On a foaming swell,
Lady floating lightly
On a seaborne shell.
 
“Oh bury me not
In the deep blue sea;
Oh bury me not
Where the cold wind flees.”
 
I carried her home
For miles and miles . . .
If only I’d known
It was just for a while.
 
The words unsaid, undone—
Gone before our time had run.
 
The whispers ceased

I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City

The day turned into the city
and the city turned into the mind
and the moving trucks trumbled along
like loud worries speaking over
the bicycle"s idea
which wove between
the more armored vehicles of expression
and over planks left by the construction workers
on a holiday morning when no work was being done
because no matter the day, we tend towards
remaking parts of it — what we said
or did, or how we looked —
and the buildings were like faces
lining the banks of a parade
obstructing and highlighting each other

The World Is in Pencil

— not pen. It"s got

that same silken
dust about it, doesn"t it,

that same sense of
having been roughed

onto paper even
as it was planned.

It had to be a labor
of love. It must"ve

taken its author some
time, some shove.

I"ll bet it felt good
in the hand — the o

of the ocean, and
the and and the and

of the land.

Easter

is my season
of defeat.

Though all
is green

and death
is done,

I feel alone.
As if the stone

rolled off
from the head

of the tomb
is lodged

in the doorframe
of my room,

and everyone
I"ve ever loved

lives happily
just past

my able reach.
And each time

Jesus rises
I"m reminded

of this marble
fact:

they are not
coming back.

Betrayal

It"s now all about money
about which poetry rarely reaches
transcendence. But love must still fester
even under that. Everyone I know
frets if poetry can still matter,
but what about love? It"s all become
too much for them, and they"re all
on the soma. It makes sense
with these pills when the someone
they thought they loved for years
by never thinking about it says,
" I don"t love you anymore,
but let"s stay friends in that mellow
woebegone way poetry now
sings without singing. " Of course,

Change

Change is the new,

improved

word for god,

lovely enough
to raise a song

or implicate

a sea of wrongs,
mighty enough,

like other gods,

to shelter,
bring together,

and estrange us.

Please, god,
we seem to say,

change us.
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