Posts filed under 'Anderson, Jon'
Elevators, like great oaks
rise into the evening, and when they descend
you hardly know yourself.
All night
the fair, shadowed cab light
shone on the trucker’s face. If only
he had learned to think like that!
Some extremes, but much benign lack of interest,
for which the heart gradually opens.
… patiently working, bringing cattle
from Denver, sorghum, oats,
butter, wheat and pigs from the Midwest,
steel bars, the body
with its different nightly smells …
He wanted to walk the length of Kansas.
The years had not even been difficult,
but like the stars
he watched from the speeding cab,
spaced unevenly …
so many particular events.
February 2nd, 2008
When I was lonely, I thought of death.
When I thought of death I was lonely.
I suppose this error will continue.
I shall enter each gray morning
Delighted by frost, which is death,
& the trees that stand alone in mist.
When I met my wife I was lonely.
Our child in her body is lonely.
I suppose this error will go on & on.
Morning I kiss my wife’s cold lips,
Nights her body, dripping with mist.
This is the error that fascinates.
I suppose you are secretly lonely,
Thinking of death, thinking of love.
I’d like, please, to leave on your sill
Just one cold flower, whose beauty
Would leave you inconsolable all day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.
February 2nd, 2008
Homage to Robert Bresson
Spaces await their people.
An alabaster row of public urinals.
An empty theater. A table,
Chairs, an oak door, heavily grained,
Brass knob turning & who
Shall enter, already lost forever
In their lives? Now
Will a soul reveal its human face,
Secret luminous flesh,
& because the soul is speechless
There will be little talk,
Better revealed in this single plate
Set like a day-moon or
Lidless eye before its chair.
Who sits shall eat, because
It is important to stay alive, to
Bear the soul’s countenance
Down into the streets, their traffic,
Its endless movement. Here
A young priest, shaken, prays to give
False solace to the dying;
A girl, too young, casually prepares
To drown. Why are these
Forsaken, too long in anguish?
Why does the tree bear leaves,
The water bear downward into the earth?
This is the law, the rest
A commentary. She take off her clothes,
Folding them. He enters
A room. Though nothing can be done,
They are not resigned.
February 2nd, 2008