share


The Cloud of Knowing

There are those who would have paid that.

The amount your eyes bonded with

(O spangled home) will have to work it out in a room

like they have certain chairs set up together

which were blue-violet. We all have to fail

at end of days, yet not so pronto

she said. And lo, it was like a breeze of vacuum

beyond the stiff perimeters already granted us.

A whole goes. And then a whole lot.

 

Most valuably, no one writes a letter

to those sprinting up ahead, who wouldn’t read it anyway.

In Dodge and other windswept places

the evening news took pride of place.

Attentats were back. Parental concern loomed. Peckers

swollen by the rainforest beckoned.

Many liberals and even some conservatives

called for a business replacement. Jeez, you guys,

can’t you hum anything? What about little Elfrida?

He’s not the famous young person I knew.

That one had a lot of little bits in it,

you know, soothing, from home, a minefield.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

(1927-2017) was one of the great American poets. This poem was published in The White Review No. 8.

READ NEXT

fiction

April 2012

They Told the Story from the Lighthouse

Chimene Suleyman

fiction

April 2012

I found Margate watching the sea. And I walked the streets thinking they had left it sometime in the...

Interview

May 2014

Interview with Conrad Shawcross

Patrick Sykes

Interview

May 2014

Though an intimidating sixteen feet tall, the industrial robot in Conrad Shawcross’s flat doesn’t look at all out of...

fiction

January 2015

Judge Sa’b

Uday Prakash

TR. Jason Grunebaum

fiction

January 2015

Nine years ago, after thirteen years of living in the Rohini neighbourhood of north Delhi, I moved, and came...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required