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 the 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 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 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

poetry

January 2015

dear angélica

Angélica Freitas

TR. Hilary Kaplan

poetry

January 2015

dear angélica   dear angélica I can’t make it I got stuck in the elevator between the ninth and...

feature

December 2016

Wildness of the Day

Orlando Reade

feature

December 2016

One day in late 2011, waiting outside Green Park station, my gaze was drawn to an unexpected sight. Earlier...

feature

January 2011

Futures Past: Monumental Memorials of Modern Berlin

Leila Peacock

feature

January 2011

Cities display a worship of history in the monuments and memorials that they choose to erect, through which the...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required