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

feature

June 2012

Nothing Here Now But The Recordings: Listening to William Burroughs

Charlie Fox

feature

June 2012

About a month ago I was in Berlin. Every night I had a very strange dream. I was watching...

Interview

August 2017

Interview with Ottessa Moshfegh

Yen Pham

Interview

August 2017

Ottessa Moshfegh’s first two books are, as she tells me, very different from one another. But despite the contrast...

feature

November 2014

Every Night is Like a Disco: Iraq 2003

Paul Currion

feature

November 2014

That day at Kassim’s, there was no music. There was almost no sound at all, not even the echoes...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required