Edward Dorn's Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2012), third selection

Some favourite passages from Hands Up!, 1964:


the deer eye opens in the mind
on the acoustics of the hunt....

from "The Deer's Eye the Hunter's Nose"

Walking is what I associate 

with Ledyard, distance as sheer urge....

*

Mystic sheer distance was in thine eye,

that beautiful abstract reckoning,

the feet, walking: for no other reason

the world.

from "Ledyard: The Exhaustion of Sheer Distance"

...for an eye to offer coherence

at times,

you have to use your head as an arbiter,

a relief, for it all.

*

Cheerfulness is still a misleading humor.

Much is blinding

besides the sun. Yet I am sure you see.

The hour is important.

from "The Land Below"

Fog fell down our mountain.

*

The day he died--

the slow quiet break. 

from "Hawthorne, End of March, 1962"

we scoured the ground of the earth

to start fires

in these rickety geographies

we knew better than to call home

from "Oh Don't Ask Why"

 

Finding myself in america

slowly walking around the deserted bandstand, waiting

for the decade, and the facetious new arrivals.

last lines of "A Fate of Unannounced Years"

And two passages from Nine Songs, 1965:

 

how long can love

suffer in the cross streets of this town

marked simply by the clicking railroad

and scratch of the janitor's broom

 

last lines of "3"

 

 

...sustained by the long passion for darkness

man is.

 

from "9"