ISSUE: Spring 2000
1
The April rain has a smell
that lingers among grass and earth
and the diffusing gray of the city sky
makes the car lights more luminous
this might be a fantasy but it is rather the other side of the poem
on the other side of the poem
I see a form in the shadows:
legs, a breast, an obscured face
and some who no longer walk Earth
on the other side of the poem
I am writing the poem
in their immense silence
of grief without reference
each dawn on the other side of the poem
comets streak the sky
permission is asked to enter the abstractions
infecting speech
when we cannot find the counters
to clarify the emotion that engulfs us
I am often speaking of this
with someone in my head
who is never absent
on the other side of the poem
2
Now the stunning sun shines
on the other side of the poem
objects of an age: condom, cigarette, microchip
ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago
it was said saints walked among the people
on the other side of the poem
is the blank world past which there is nothing
and the other world
of endless possibility
which are the same worlds
in so far as memory and imagination converge in the actual
though sometimes
I forget who walks the rooms
if I am the son or the father
with a woman or with Mother
while the mausoleums of the clouds
disperse and gather
while the vaults of the oceans are rebuilt and leveled
the thunder of the armies and of the engines
that Alexander brought to Phoenicia to raze Tyre
we are born to the Earth
and made its rulers
until each is the alien
stranded without choice on the Earth
in whose gravity
the mourner kneels
on the other side of the poem
