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

Interview

November 2015

Interview with Dor Guez

Helen Mackreath

Interview

November 2015

Dor Guez, artist, scholar, photographer, archivist, wants to avoid being classified, but it’s difficult not to fall into the...

feature

August 2013

The Ghosts of Place

Dylan Trigg

feature

August 2013

 ‘So I turned around for an instant to look at what my field of vision onto the sea had...

fiction

November 2011

Sheepskin

Olivia Heal

fiction

November 2011

The first I noticed was your thumbnails, large, round and flat, like two plates. They were marked with yellowed...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required