business
In spite of things, why not make it in spite of everything?
That way, maybe the feeble lakes and swamps
Of the back country will get plugged into the circuit
And not just the major events but the whole incredible
Mass of everything happening simultaneously and pairing off,
Channeling itself into history, will unroll
As carefully and as casually as a conversation in the next room,
And the purity of today will invest us like a breeze,
Only be hard, spare, ironical: something one can
Tip one’s hat to and still get some use out of.
The parade is turning into our street.
My stars, the burnished uniforms and prismatic
Features of this instant belong here. The land
Is pulling away from the magic, glittering coastal towns
To an aforementioned rendezvous with August and December.
The hunch is it will always be this way,
The look, the way things first scared you
In the night light, and later turned out to be,
Yet still capable, all the same, of a narrow fidelity
To what you and they wanted to become:
No sighs like Russian music, only a vast unraveling
Out toward the junctions and to the darkness beyond
To these bare fields, built at today’s expense.
The Gazing Grain
The tires slowly came to a rubbery stop.
Alliterative festoons in the sky noted
That this branchy birthplace of presidents was also
The big frigidaire-cum-cowbarn where mendicant
And margrave alike waited out the results
Of the natural elections. So any openness of song
Was the plainer way. O take me to the banks
Of your Mississippi over there, etc. Like a plant
Rooted in parched earth I am
A stranger myself in the dramatic lighting,
The result of war. That which is given to see
At any moment is the residue, shadowed
In gold or emerging into the clear bluish haze
Of uncertainty. We come back to ourselves
Through the rubbish of cloud and tree-spattered pavement.
These days stand like vapor under the trees.
Unctuous Platitudes
There is no reason for the surcharge to bother you.
Living in a city one is nonplussed by some
Of the inhabitants. The weather has grown gray with age.
Poltergeists go about their business, sometimes
Demanding a sweeping revision. The breath of the air
Is invisible. People stay
Next to the edges of fields, hoping that out of nothing
Something will come, and it does, but what? Embers
Of the rain tamp down the shitty darkness that issues
From nowhere. A man in her room, you say.
I like the really wonderful way you express things
So that it might be said, that of all the ways in which to
Emphasize a posture or a particular mental climate
Like this gray-violet one with a thin white irregular line
Descending the two vertical sides, these are those which
Can also unsay an infinite number of pauses
In the ceramic day. Every invitation
To every stranger is met at the station.
The Couple in the Next Room
She liked the blue drapes. They made a star
At the angle. A boy in leather moved in.
Later they found names from the turn of the century
Coming home one evening. The whole of being
Unknown absorbed into the stalk. A free
Bride on the rails warning to notice other
Hers and the great graves that outwore them
Like faces on a building, the lightning rod
Of a name calibrated all their musing differences.
Another day. Deliberations are recessed
In an iron-blue chamber of that afternoon
On which we wore things and looked well at
A slab of business rising behind the stars.
The Explanation
The luxury of now is that the cancelled gala has been
Put back in. The orchestra is starting to tune up.
The tone-row of a dripping faucet is batted back and forth
Among the kitchen, the confusion outside, the pale bluster
Of the sky, the correct but insidious grass.
The conductor, a glass of water, permits all kinds
Of wacky analogies to glance off him, and, circling outward,
To bring in the night. Nothing is too “unimportant”
Or too important, for that matter. The newspaper and the
In spite of things, why not make it in spite of everything?
That way, maybe the feeble lakes and swamps
Of the back country will get plugged into the circuit
And not just the major events but the whole incredible
Mass of everything happening simultaneously and pairing off,
Channeling itself into history, will unroll
As carefully and as casually as a conversation in the next room,
And the purity of today will invest us like a breeze,
Only be hard, spare, ironical: something one can
Tip one’s hat to and still get some use out of.
The parade is turning into our street.
My stars, the burnished uniforms and prismatic
Features of this instant belong here. The land
Is pulling away from the magic, glittering coastal towns
To an aforementioned rendezvous with August and December.
The hunch is it will always be this way,
The look, the way things first scared you
In the night light, and later turned out to be,
Yet still capable, all the same, of a narrow fidelity
To what you and they wanted to become:
No sighs like Russian music, only a vast unraveling
Out toward the junctions and to the darkness beyond
To these bare fields, built at today’s expense.
The Gazing Grain
The tires slowly came to a rubbery stop.
Alliterative festoons in the sky noted
That this branchy birthplace of presidents was also
The big frigidaire-cum-cowbarn where mendicant
And margrave alike waited out the results
Of the natural elections. So any openness of song
Was the plainer way. O take me to the banks
Of your Mississippi over there, etc. Like a plant
Rooted in parched earth I am
A stranger myself in the dramatic lighting,
The result of war. That which is given to see
At any moment is the residue, shadowed
In gold or emerging into the clear bluish haze
Of uncertainty. We come back to ourselves
Through the rubbish of cloud and tree-spattered pavement.
These days stand like vapor under the trees.
Unctuous Platitudes
There is no reason for the surcharge to bother you.
Living in a city one is nonplussed by some
Of the inhabitants. The weather has grown gray with age.
Poltergeists go about their business, sometimes
Demanding a sweeping revision. The breath of the air
Is invisible. People stay
Next to the edges of fields, hoping that out of nothing
Something will come, and it does, but what? Embers
Of the rain tamp down the shitty darkness that issues
From nowhere. A man in her room, you say.
I like the really wonderful way you express things
So that it might be said, that of all the ways in which to
Emphasize a posture or a particular mental climate
Like this gray-violet one with a thin white irregular line
Descending the two vertical sides, these are those which
Can also unsay an infinite number of pauses
In the ceramic day. Every invitation
To every stranger is met at the station.
The Couple in the Next Room
She liked the blue drapes. They made a star
At the angle. A boy in leather moved in.
Later they found names from the turn of the century
Coming home one evening. The whole of being
Unknown absorbed into the stalk. A free
Bride on the rails warning to notice other
Hers and the great graves that outwore them
Like faces on a building, the lightning rod
Of a name calibrated all their musing differences.
Another day. Deliberations are recessed
In an iron-blue chamber of that afternoon
On which we wore things and looked well at
A slab of business rising behind the stars.
The Explanation
The luxury of now is that the cancelled gala has been
Put back in. The orchestra is starting to tune up.
The tone-row of a dripping faucet is batted back and forth
Among the kitchen, the confusion outside, the pale bluster
Of the sky, the correct but insidious grass.
The conductor, a glass of water, permits all kinds
Of wacky analogies to glance off him, and, circling outward,
To bring in the night. Nothing is too “unimportant”
Or too important, for that matter. The newspaper and the
Similar Books
Dead Giveaway
Leann Sweeney
Intimate Danger (Empire Blue)
D.C. Stone
Strife: Part Two (The Strife Series Book 2)
Sky Corgan
The Detachment
Barry Eisler
The Magpies Nest
Isabel Paterson
Dragons vs. Drones
Wesley King
Lion Heart
A. C. Gaughen
Stormed Fortress
Janny Wurts
Hairy London
Stephen Palmer
