There’s only one time when you were perfect for loving in life, and if you miss that time, if you ignore it or pass it by, you’ve really missed something. James Salter I Autumn wind, the leaves a golden mash at our feet in the kind, quiet blaze of the streetlight; I am taking your…
1 Above deck, ice-scarred, off to Albion. ___ Let it be named so, for the dynastic furies combed into heads, pressed into lines of boys shouting ‘here, sir,’ and ‘not here, sir’ at devotion or on the parade ground, leaping over shadows as the sea broke with their names interred in the same roster,…
The bars long since closed when the shouting begins down the street Open the fucking door and all my old selves leap to their feet sick with adrenaline rushing to the point of convergence where things go bad. With repetitive force the voice assumes a switched-on hydraulic quality a monotony allowing…
They appear out of nowhere as if they know where all the doors are between our dimension and where they are called by their true name, are not the last survivors of their evolutionary niche. Familiarity does not diminish their curiosity, and even the great plain aligned to the grid of monoculture is not monotony,…
I signed the papers, and the world created out of all I have destroyed honestly doesn’t look much different. A grainy whitish wind blows in from Little Poland, and a human form in heavy gear screams unanswerable questions into traffic. Questions, while inadequate to truth, are faithful to sorrow, so fair enough. Inside…
I can’t make it right. Not the shadow lying on the snow, not the snow, terrain sloping crudely toward the poor outcome of a structure neither representational nor abstract, and the sketched-out town beyond ill-proportioned, depthless, and basic. There isn’t any sense of an origin, of what Plato called the lower soul, to animate what’s…
Each old thing in its new place must prove its worth yet again. Dust is disturbed, having made itself at home among what former tenants have found wanting. A friend brings a gift to brighten my room then leaves a cruel word to move in with me. Good and bad don’t always line…
Figs are sweet, but don’t last long. They spoil fast in transit, says the shopkeeper. Like kisses, adds his wife, a hunched old woman with bright eyes. Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Good government, Buon Governo, and the good judge — we see how Siena thrives under the just ruler. Peace reigns over all, revealed. The peasants work serenely, grapes swell with pride, a wedding party dances in the street. But bad government sets out to torment justice, who bears the lovely name Iustitia, it…
Let’s try to imagine it: a little like old Tolstoy he strolls the fields of Picardy, where funny tanks once clumsily defeated the terrain’s slight elevation. He visits the town where Bruno Schulz died or sits on a riverbank above the Vistula’s dim water, a meadow scented with warm dandelions, burdocks, and…
And then when you entered the empty garage a trumpet called as in the Fifth Symphony And it suddenly grew clear that there is joy and death and mad flies that circle the table where all of you sat just moments ago calmly chatting
The old painter stands by the studio window, where his brushes and colors lie. Poets wait for inspiration, but objects and faces assault the painter, they arrive shrieking. Their contours, though, have blurred and faded. Objects turn blind, mute. The old painter feels only a dim wave of light, a longing for…
