![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Another one for Poetry Month
Charles Wright is a poet I met only when I had to teach his poems--the very best thing about the work I did for thirty years was that I learned about writers I'd never have known, otherwise. Oh, yeah, the students, that was pretty good, too. This makes me think of the Anglo-Saxon poets and Hopkins, in the alliteration and rhythm and word-choice--lots of his poems use that, but this one is especially strong.
Deep Measure
by Charles Wright
Shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light
Undercard of a short month, February Sunday
Wordlessness of the wrong world
In the day's dark niche, the patron saint of what-Goes-Down
Shuffles her golden deck and deals
on for you and one for me...
And that's it, a single number -- we play what we get
My hand says measure,
doves on the wire and the first bulb blades
Edging up through the mulch-mat,
Inside-out of the winter gum trees,
A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes,
Deep measure, deep measure that runnels beneath the bone,
That sways our attitude and sets our lives to muse;
Deep measure, down under and death drawn
Pilgrim, homeboy of false time,
Listen and set your foot down, listen and step lightly
Deep Measure
by Charles Wright
Shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light
Undercard of a short month, February Sunday
Wordlessness of the wrong world
In the day's dark niche, the patron saint of what-Goes-Down
Shuffles her golden deck and deals
on for you and one for me...
And that's it, a single number -- we play what we get
My hand says measure,
doves on the wire and the first bulb blades
Edging up through the mulch-mat,
Inside-out of the winter gum trees,
A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes,
Deep measure, deep measure that runnels beneath the bone,
That sways our attitude and sets our lives to muse;
Deep measure, down under and death drawn
Pilgrim, homeboy of false time,
Listen and set your foot down, listen and step lightly
no subject
'A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes'.
no subject
no subject