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

Art

November 2013

The Past is a Foreign Country

Natasha Hoare

Art

November 2013

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ The immortal first line to L. P. Hartley’s...

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with André Schiffrin

Jacques Testard

Gwénaël Pouliquen

Interview

Issue No. 1

André Schiffrin founded non-profit publishing house The New Press in 1990 after an acrimonious split with Random House –...

Interview

June 2012

Interview with Malcolm McNeill

Patrick Langley

Interview

June 2012

I first met Malcolm McNeill in 2007. He was in London to do some printing for an exhibition, and he showed...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required