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

October 2013

Last Supper in Seduction City

Álvaro Enrigue

TR. Brendan Riley

fiction

October 2013

 ‘. . . and the siege dissolved to peace, and the horsemen all rode down in sight of the...

Interview

March 2015

Interview with Jonathan Meades

Jamie Sutcliffe

Interview

March 2015

The television broadcasts of Jonathan Meades are marked by a surreal humour, a polymathic breadth of knowledge, and a...

Art

July 2013

Redressing the Balance: Women in the Art World

Louisa Elderton

Art

July 2013

London is among the capitals of the international art world. Every day and night is witness to innumerable new...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required