We Never Know
By Yusef Komunyakaa
He danced with tall grass for a moment, like he was swaying with a woman.
Our gun barrels glowed white-hot.
When I got to him, a blue halo of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbled photograph from his fingers.
There's no other way to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again, except for a distant mortar & somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket & turned him over, so he wouldn't be kissing the ground.
Love Letter (Clouds)
By Sarah Manguso
for B. H.
I didn’t fall in love. I fell through it:
Came out the other side moments later, hands full of matter, waking up from the dream of a bullet tearing through the middle of my body.
I no longer understand anything for longer than a long moment,or the time it takes to receive the shot.
This kind of gravity is like falling through a cloud, forgetting it all,and then being told about it later. On the day you fell through a cloud . . .
It must be true. If it were not, then when did these strands of silver netting attach to my hair?
The problem was finding that you were real and not just a dream of clouds.
If you weren’t real, I would address this letter to one of two entities: myself, or everyone else. The effect would be equivalent.
The act of falling happens in time. That is, it takes long enough for the falling to shear away from the moments before and the moments after, long enough for one to have thought I am falling. I have been falling. I continue to fall.
Falling through a ring, in this case, would not mean falling through the center of the annulus—a planet floats there. Falling through the ring means falling through the spaces between the objects that together make the ring.
On the way through, clasp your fists around the universe:
Nothing but ice-gravel.
But open your hands when you reach the other side. Quickly, before it melts.
What did I leave you?
Sonnet 23: Methought I saw my late espoused saint
By John Milton
Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescu'd from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the old Law did save,And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind; Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear as in no face with more delight. But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd, I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.
You Were You Are Elegy
By Mary Jo Bang
Fragile like a child is fragile. Destined not to be forever.
Destined to become other To mother. Here I am Sitting on a chair, thinking About you. Thinking
About how it was To talk to you.
How sometimes it was wonderful And sometimes it was awful.
How drugs when drugs were Undid the good almost entirely But not entirely Because good could always be seen
Glimmering like lame glimmers In the window of a shop Called Beautiful
Things Never Last Forever.
I loved you. I love you. You were.
It's all so simple. Experience is The chair we sit on.
The sitting. The thinking Of you where you are a blank
To be filled In by missing. I loved you.
I love you like I love All beautiful things. True beauty is truly seldom.
You were. You are In May. May now is looking onto This is how I measure The year. Everything Was My Fault
Has been the theme of the song I've been singing, Even when you've told me to quiet.
I haven't been quiet. I've been crying. I think you Have forgiven me. You keep
Putting your hand on my shoulder When I'm crying.
Thank you for that. And For the ineffable sense Of continuance. You were. You are The brightest thing in the shop window
And the most beautiful seldom I ever saw.
Buried at Springs
By James Schuyler
There is a hornet in the room and one of us will have to go out the window into the late August midafternoon sun.
I won. There is a certain challenge in being humane to hornets but not much. A launch draws two lines of wake behind it on the bay like a delta with a melted base.
Sandy billows, or so they look, of feathery ripe heads of grass,an acid-yellow kind of goldenrod glowing or glowering in shade.
Rocks with rags of shadow, washed dust clouts that will never bleach.
It is not like this at all.
The rapid running of the lapping water a hollow knock of someone shipping oars: it’s eleven years since Frank sat at this desk and saw and heard it all the incessant water the immutable crickets only not the same: new needles on the spruce, new seaweed on the low-tide rocks other grass and other water even the great gold lichen on a granite boulder even the boulder quite literally is not the same
An Elegy
By Ben Jonson
Though beauty be the mark of praise, And yours of whom I sing be such As not the world can praise too much, Yet ’tis your virtue now I raise.
A virtue, like allay, so gone Throughout your form, as, though that move And draw and conquer all men’s love, This sùbjects you to love of one.
Wherein you triumph yet; because ’Tis of yourself, and that you use The noblest freedom, not to choose Against or faith or honor’s laws.
But who should less expect from you, In whom alone Love lives again? By whom he is restored to men, And kept, and bred, and brought up true.
His falling temples you have reared, The withered garlands ta’en away; His altars kept from the decay That envy wished, and nature feared;
And on them burn so chaste a flame, With so much loyalties’ expense, As Love, t’ acquit such excellence, Is gone himself into your name.
And you are he; the deity To whom all lovers are designed That would their better objects find; Among which faithful troop am I.
Who, as an offspring at your shrine, Have sung this hymn, and here entreat One spark of your diviner heat To light upon a love of mine.
Which, if it kindle not, but scant Appear, and that to shortest view, Yet give me leave t’ adore in you What I in her am grieved to want.
Life need refresh.