Saturday, September 18, 2004
I'm still unsure as to how posting a poem here counts for eventual publishing. I'd like to know. But this is a first part to something (and what is so far of the second), so for one reason or other (quality; part of what will be longer; eventually will probably be heavily edited) it is, I imagine, exempt. When I lived in New York, I used to go to the Metropolitan Museum as often as I could--now I can't, so what I'm writing here about is from memory. Which will end up being, I hope, the point. I fear Keats' Urn.
Tradition World
i.
What does it look like
inside
the long-necked amphora
inside
a glass cube, under a skylight,
inside
the Met, to be wanting
up, out
of the belly, and through?
The moon.
Past the thumbprints, which each
labored dint
in clay light shows as cirrostratus, philosophical-
est clouds?
Yes, that stable throat
is the moon.
ii.
missing strings harmonize now silence
now my mind
Tradition World
i.
What does it look like
inside
the long-necked amphora
inside
a glass cube, under a skylight,
inside
the Met, to be wanting
up, out
of the belly, and through?
The moon.
Past the thumbprints, which each
labored dint
in clay light shows as cirrostratus, philosophical-
est clouds?
Yes, that stable throat
is the moon.
ii.
missing strings harmonize now silence
now my mind
