[from a poem on England...]
...the haggard
diaries of quickly here & there, like a blooded hound
with his leash in his own mouth, ringing
in the articulate air a cultural error.
*
The last gaze at stones in a calamine expanse
wherein dusty snow sifts her tin kiss to
tradition
here
where
even Eros would be ill dressed.
from "Relics from a Polar Cairn"
Today I am a vast dirge.
Today I have not flown....
*
Today I am impatient with small horrors.
from "The Revival"
Oh I love plants but where I am the weather
drives the birds away
*
Whorled, like a univalve shell
into herself,
early to bed, nothing
in her head, here and there
from "The Hide of My Mother"
...all in an enkindled February....
*
...at night too Pocatello wasn't Pocatello but a jewel
the red and the blue and bright amethyst, something you could never narrow down to gas in glass tubes.
*
...he went on anyway describing the possibilities, that's love
in the mist of indifference.
*
Everywhere I am, I feel I am everywhere else.
from "For Ray (the 6th)"
What a shock
to get over the embarrassment of using language.
That's why I write to you every day
I no longer have that tedious care.
the last lines of "The 7th"
As the expression goes, do yourself a favour, and buy Edward Dorn's The Collected Poems directly from the publisher, Carcanet Press. How could you regret it?
