Winchester Station

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1.

This train platform
so skillful in the daytime
to lie flat, soak up heat
and breathe it out gently
into shimmering air
by night hardly knows its own name.

2.

It seems like daytime
always comes around again.

3.

There was this kid
was smoking this pack of cigarettes
all the way to the bottom
kept his back to the tracks
refusing all destinations.

4.

They’re inside the train
You know what I mean?
I mean they’ll never understand.
I mean it’s different
and they’ll never understand.
I mean the question is
which is it goes by
you or the world?

 

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The Poet Speaks the Same

robert-graves

Robert Ranke Graves
Had a voice like the waves.
Its falling and rising
Was rarely surprising.

 

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The Tesseract

4dcube

The Tesseract
Despite her name
Does not intend a fancy show.

To her, in fact,
It’s all the same
Which way her edges seem to go.

 

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Final Fig

millay

I burned my candle at both ends
Thinking to get more light —

But drowned its wick in red wine
Then tumbled down a flight.

 

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Life During Wartime

2081984776_7a81aa2338_oBig-head lost her boy
In the war, now she’s crying
If you can hear her.

Grey-hair lost his friends
In the war, now he’s crying,
It’s too late to get new ones.

And the townsfolk left their dirty dishes
And left their cups overturned on the tables
And left dinner burning on the stove
When they heard the news and fled
As who wouldn’t?

Now it’s murky dusk.
Now comes the snow.
Now comes the wind.
Fuck! But it’s cold out!

And the townsfolk fled
Except the old men,
And the old women, and the ghosts,
And me, burning this old book
Just to get some light.

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Necessary Tigers

Franz_Marc_-Tiger-_Holzschnitt_1912By night nurse lamplight and stay close
By day keep your feet to the path
The tigers here are hungry ghosts
And all our hunters gone to grass

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No Evil Star

Jean_Dodal_Tarot_trump_17The world laments with many tongues;
You had your one.
But you said enough, with your rhymes and your songs
And your crying, crying, crying all night long.
You were just killing time till it was time to go
But found time dies too slow.

It’s all right now, I think you’d say.
Maybe there was a better change you could have made
But finally they’re all the same.
After the games you’d played with pain
The gas was easy, anyway.

Were you afraid? Who wouldn’t be?
You knew the soul is what it feels.
A private pain is no less real:
Yours grew until it had to be set free.
I guess you did it perfectly.

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One day he noticed a crack in the world

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One day he noticed a crack in the world
so he gave it a poke
and the world,
the whole world, seamed and shattered

There being no place for the pieces to go
they just hang there
gnashing their edges at his slightest passing
and sharp as damn all

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Toy Boat

3238836601_08e731b2d7_oInadequate paddles, a child’s boat.
It got us to the far bank
Where summer grass choked the shore
And the heat scent of summer grass grew heavy on the cooling air.

Somewhere a car-camper played a radio.
Everything seemed to stand still:
The boat still; the water still;
But we startled the shorebirds and they rose all about us, all at once.

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To Tempt Spring to Return

After Han Yu

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The low grasses, the tall trees: which of them tempts spring to return?
In fall, the trees flaunted their dying leaves; the grasses withered, leaving us melancholy.
Now they vie in beauty, tempting spring to return.
Even the poplar and the subtle elm offer up their pallid blossoms to the wind
To overflow the sky, to fly like snow, to tempt spring to return.

 

 

 

 
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