founded in 1912 by harriet monroe February 2012 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cxcix t number 5 CONTENTS February 2012 POEMS a.e. stallings 387 Momentary nate klug 388 Dare philip levine 389 How to Get There d. nurkse 392 Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes josé antonio rodríguez 393 Sunflowers robert pinsky 394 Creole connie voisine 396 “The Altar” by George Herbert joanie mackowski 398 Consciousness dean young 400 Spring Reign vijay seshadri 402 Imaginary Number philip metres 403 Compline albert goldbarth 404 Keats’s Phrase wendy videlock 406 Flowers carol frost 407 What the Dove Sings greg glazner 408 You’re arrowing out toward what. Sick to death of the hardpan shoulder, In Whose Unctions “You could lighten fiona sampson 413 From “Coleshill” david biespiel 416 Room FROM 100 YEARS rabindranath tagore 419 Poems lisel mueller 422 A Prayer for Rain weldon kees 423 Small Prayer eleanor ross taylor 424 Mother’s Blessing janet lewis 425 A Lullaby langston hughes 426 God robert frost 427 Not All There robert creeley 428 A Prayer C OMMENT various 431 One Whole Voice Jericho Brown, Fanny Howe, Kazim Ali, Jean Valentine, G.C. Waldrep, Joy Harjo, Eleanor Wilner, Dunya Mikhail, Gregory Orr, Grace Paley, Jane Hirshfield, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forché, and Alicia Ostriker contributors 466 back page 483 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Reader christina pugh Art Direction winterhouse studio cover art by felix sockwell “PegaPoe-asus,” 2011 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry t February 2012 t Volume 199 t Number 5 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. Address editorial correspondence to 61 W. Superior St., Chicago, IL 60654. Individual subscription rates: $35.00 per year domestic; $47.00 per year foreign. Library / institutional subscription rates: $38.00 per year domestic; $50.00 per year foreign. 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Copying done for other than personal or internal reference use without the expressed permission of the Poetry Foundation is prohibited. Requests for special permission or bulk orders should be addressed to the Poetry Foundation. Available in braille from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Available on microfilm and microfiche through National Archive Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, MI. Digital archive available at jstor.org. Distributed to bookstores by Ingram Periodicals, Source Interlink, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the uk. POEMS a.e stallings Momentary I never glimpse her but she goes Who had been basking in the sun, Her links of chain mail one by one Aglint with pewter, bronze and rose. I never see her lying coiled Atop the garden step, or under A dark leaf, unless I blunder And by some motion she is foiled. Too late I notice as she passes Zither of chromatic scale — I only ever see her tail Quicksilver into tall grasses. I know her only by her flowing, By her glamour disappearing Into shadow as I’m nearing — I only recognize her going. A.E. STALLINGS 387 nate klug Dare Not, this time, to infer but to wait you out between regret and parking lot somewhere in the day like a dare Salt grime and the foodcarts’ rising steam, at Prospect St. a goshawk huge and aloof, picking at something, nested in twigs and police tape for a while we all held our phones up It is relentless, the suddenness of every other song, creature, neighbor as though this life would prove you only by turning into itself 388 POETRY philip levine How to Get There Turn left o≠ Henry onto Middagh Street to see our famous firehouse, home of Engine 205 and Hook & Ladder 118 and home also to the mythic painting “Fire under the Bridge” decorating the corrugated sliding door. The painting depicts a giant American flag wrinkled by wind and dwarfing the famous Brooklyn Bridge as it stretches as best it can to get a purchase on Manhattan. In the distance a few dismal towers and beyond the towers still another river. A little deal table holds a tiny American flag — like the one Foreman held as he bowed to receive gold at the ’68 Olympics in Mexico City — ; this actual flag is rooted in a can of hothouse roses going brown at the edges and beginning to shed. There’s a metal collection box bearing the names of those lost during the recent burnings. Should you stop to shake the box — which is none PHILIP LEVINE 389 of your business — you’ll hear only a whisper. Perhaps the donations are all hush money, ones, fives, tens, twenties, or more likely there are IOUs and the heart of Brooklyn has gone cold from so much asking. Down the block and across the street, a man sleeps on the sidewalk, an ordinary man, somehow utterly spent, he sleeps through all the usual sounds of a Brooklyn noon. Beside him a dog, a terrier, its muzzle resting on crossed paws, its brown eyes wide and intelligent. Between man and dog sits a take-out co≠ee cup meant to receive, next to it a picture of Jesus — actually a digital, color photograph of the Lord in his prime, robed and though bearded impossibly young and athletic, and — as always — alone. “Give what you can,” 390 POETRY says a hand-lettered cardboard sign to all who pass. If you stand there long enough without giving or receiving the shabby, little terrier will close his eyes. If you stand there long enough the air will thicken with dusk and dust and exhaust and finally with a starless dark. The day will become something it’s never been before, something for which I have no name. PHILIP LEVINE 391 d. nurkse Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes Ignorance will carry me through the last days, the blistering cities, over briny rivers swarming with jellyfish, as once my father carried me from the car up the tacked carpet to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it. 392 POETRY josé antonio rodríguez Sunflowers No pitying / “Ah” for this one — Alan Shapiro No, nor a fierce hurrah for what it does without choice, for following the light for the same reason the light follows it. Just a thing rough to the touch, a face like a thousand ticks turning their backs, suckling at something you can’t see, and a body like a tag o≠ the earth so that my child hands couldn’t tear it out from the overgrown lot next door. My palms raw with the shock of quills and spines. Its hold like spite, and ugly except when seen from a distance — a whole field of them by the highway, an 80-mile-per-hour view like a camera’s flash. All of them like halos without saints to weigh them down. JOSÉ ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ 393 robert pinsky Creole I’m tired of the gods, I’m pious about the ancestors: afloat In the wake widening behind me in time, the restive devisers. My father had one job from high school till he got fired at thirty. The year was 1947 and his boss, planning to run for mayor, Wanted to hire an Italian veteran, he explained, putting it In plain English. I was seven years old, my sister was two. The barbarian tribes in the woods were so savage the Empire Had to conquer them to protect and clear its perimeter. So into the woods Rome sent out missions of civilizing Governors and invaders to establish schools, courts, garrisons: Soldiers, clerks, o∞cials, citizens with their household slaves. Years or decades or entire lives were spent out in the hinterlands — Which might be good places to retire on a government pension, Especially if in those work-years you had acquired a native wife. Often I get these things wrong or at best mixed up but I do Feel piety toward those persistent mixed families in Gaul, Britain, Thrace. When I die may I take my place in the wedge Widening and churning in the mortal ocean of years of souls. As I get it, the Roman colonizing and mixing, the intricate Imperial Processes of enslaving and freeing, involved not just the inevitable Fucking in all senses of the word, but also marriages and births As developers and barbers, scribes and thugs mingled and coupled With the native people and peoples. Begetting and trading, they Needed to swap, blend and improvise languages — couples 394 POETRY Especially needed to invent French, Spanish, German: and I confess — Roman, barbarian — I find that Creole work more glorious than God. The way it happened, the school sent around a notice: anybody Interested in becoming an apprentice optician, raise your hand.