Poetry Archives

The consolations of space are nameless things.
                                    —Wallace Stevens


                          1.
  The year is late.  The Northern Cross appears—
six slight rivets of light fastening Cygnus to—
  In Cassiopeia, Brahe’s brilliant, sublunary
addition of 1572

                          2.
displaced belief in the single, objective point
  of observation—
impelling the eye—
  Through what accretion, or division,
are we reflected in a constellation’s core?
  By what change in form
of movement are we altered, in our own mass?

                          3.
In the lower atmosphere, drifting stratus displays
a stratified enunciation—
      a long, displacing glance—

                          4.
Slight residue of rain taps on the roof,
    an unexpected dissipation
glancing all the forms (footbridge, street lamp) —
  wind picking up, holding each
in an imaginary singularity, carrying
    one leaf into brief postponement—

                          5.
  Outside a half lit mall, along the walkways,
bare gingkoes (fruit crushed beneath the treading)
  threaded by the wrens’ caterwaul—
a patterned plenitude illuminating the facade brick by brick—
  Buses pull out, mid phrasing the night.

                          6.
In the midst of half illumination,
  all transformability, beginning…

                          7.
in the austere watchfulness.

                          8.
With effort, with the minute by minute of mortal design
    (reflection, inflection, substance
for light’s absorption)

                          9.
what spirit is again shaped by this formless wind—
      its invariant rest reconfigured and singing
in the form of physical song—

  its particulate and finite flight?


(for D.E., 1963-1994)