Sample Poem:
Auden
I know there is no author, and then, there is
everywhere this veil of dust and nomenclature
unknowingly inhaled. The words of the dead
lie down in the public park to give the snows
a place to fall. What is an elegy if not carved
into a field made legible, so long as it is cold.
In a killing season, grieve so much, and then
make room. A little heart in the form of stillness.
The names of millions walk into a bridge on fire.
Into silence and then a deeper, greener silence.
The books of the dead fold our palms at the end
of time where the beloved die so many times,
you would think they would be better at it, less
restless, more content. Poetry makes nothing
happen. Faceless statues in the snow bear witness.
So easy to feel alone with the century in a poem,
to watch the indifferent shoreline industries
trickle smoke into a sky. To feel a little pointless
above the river, a cautionary tale no one reads.
Memorial symphonies fire cannons in the fog,
and I love the bluster. I trust the grief. I love
the chalk that strikes a blow across the black of day.
My city, although I did not call it mine, not until
I heard a radio counting casualties from the Rhine.
Prague in the amber of a silent movie wants badly
to be held, dubbed in whatever confusion gleaned
from the gestures of lips. The flicker of the spool’s
feed gives way to the no less mournful soundscape
that moves the armored car or skull or stretcher
across the steel and human wreckage of the square.
All things more infected with experience
the deeper we go: where knowledge ends, love begins.
I read that, but when I looked again, I walked
into the thirteenth century, and the library rose
into a steeple of fire, and a man ran in to gather
what was legible among the scrolls and embers.
I feel for you, says a husband who was not born
a Jew and will not die one, although he places
a stone against the larger burden with the others
of her family. Is it true, the conscious life,
laid in the cradle of song, makes more personal
that loss, more fierce the lion of books on fire.
I too am frightened. It helps to know. I want
to find a book worth burning and therefore reading.
We will remember, says the door to a museum,
the air a grave of anthems, dust from the artifacts,
a seraphim of pins to hold a jacket on exhibit.
In the corner a movie plays to a row of chairs.
In a soundtrack scored for strings and six million
reasons to sit down, I love the great emptiness
the contralto enters with the caution of a candle.
A circle of light. Even as we leave and the mound
of spectacles turns to cinders, the music is not over.