Sunday, May 17, 2009

epigram

This is a poem about a horse that got tired.
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
I want to go home.
I want you to go home.
This is a poem which tells the story,
which is the story.
I don't know.


from "Please" by Robert Creeley

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epigram [from Susan Howe's THE BIRTH-MARK] followed by a comment of sorts

Ground and dont suffer your Cattle to tread upon it
and so poach and break the soil, and you will never
want any Dung.


Diary of John Adams, Tuesday, June 25, 1771


__________________________________



DUNG Hog Horses Oxen Cows
And Sheep


FOG


POACH



We knew their names once because we had spoke of
Them to our neighbor
And at market.

remnant memory

This remnant ark, this hollowed horse
where you hid to hear the owls and
squander blood in the begging bowl
of your hands, it is here you curse
with lightest breath, drift as eye-flicker
in tall grass by the creek with its moving shells,
it is here. Each torn day it is here,
you tick at it with fingers first dabbed
in stiff ink made by what you hold
in your palm, stain-wise. Ten thousand
light-years from now your mother scuttles
on her back to see what you saw:
a man in animal head, shaken, raw.

***

This is a revision of a poem that remains elusive. I doubt it is finished, or even barely begun. Something about an ancient rite is felt here. More than that I am unable to offer specifics. This will probably never appear in any collection, so I give it here a kind of burial.

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