Poetry

William Blake saw an angel
sitting in a tree. Blondin crossed Niagara
on a cable. And Maria Taglioni
for a Russian highwayman
danced on a panther’s skin spread over the snow
in 1855.

At rest-hour a rhythmic
faint squink, squink
in the top bunk
farthest from the counselor:

each beast tells his own story
this is my story to you
I have loved you seventeen years
and both of us are not young any more
we live in another country

In that bad year, in a city to have now no name,
In the already-dark of a winter’s day, our feet

upon mutability—if it were possible. But you
don’t know me. Already you cannot conceive my making the second line
of a poem so much longer than the first.

We knew the rat in the crawlspace
was chewing on something essential.
But who’d go down to set the traps?
The house was ours—wasn’t it my duty
to protect it?