Showing posts with label 16 Feb 14. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 16 Feb 14. Show all posts

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Here

"Many of the mediolana are places that a traveller might well describe as 'the middle of nowhere.'"

Light from the south as much as the west strokes
The narrow cedars like fingers, a mile
From the mouth of the known national park

That, in the United States, was once called
Zion. Next to the cedars, a prison,
One-celled, windowed, cemented from sandstone

Blocks, blocks the the high road of understanding.
A little water trickles from a spring.
One can, falsely, imagine young voices,

But who alive today could understand
Why the world's greatest secular empire
To that point in time named this spot "Zion"?
 
Connect all the world's possible Zions,
One draws a perfectly random scatter,
And who accepts randomness lovingly?

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Dr. Dolittle's Revenge

"It doesn't mean anything at all."

The lizard is a little-known
Lover of language. It says things--
Not wise or original things
Of course, but the odd sorts of things

Poets say who pretend we don't
Care if you can read us or not
Because we're too lazy to care
If we meant anything at all--

For instance, "oh to be be thin, warm,
And naked but safe in the sun,
With an unreproachable thirst
For the cold, pale ale on my tongue"--

That sort of thing, where you can tell
The lizard is pleased with itself
And would throw in a quotation
About dogs walking on hind legs

If it knew one, which it doesn't,
Being only a small lizard
Fluffing its green scales in the sun,
Foolishly, unseasonably

Out and about early, where crows
Could only fail to pick it off
From the rock out of perfect shock,
Like the human who heard it talk.