Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CAST FROM HEAVEN, by JANE MILLER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CAST FROM HEAVEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There must have been something like writing across their faces
Last Line: Thus work and rest are shared.
Subject(s): Conversation


There must have been something like writing across their faces.
There would have been sorrow, and tenderness, would there not?
And a sound, as if someone, I don't know by what means, spoke
our first thoughts upon waking.
We won't see them again, vagrants, skins.
A rash of daylight.

Careful. Time pairs with nature,
time is evil and sentimental.
One vital expression will return you to the creamery for your fill
and it will be farther and farther away,
no longer part of the country but deep in the bowel
of the city, which is all but framed in memory.
A few spires, girders extended into space,
and beyond, sky, where the sun stamped everything for deportation.

Once there was a choice, to talk or not, to boast,
to stall, we accepted it; but now, cast from heaven
the few words correspond only to ideas, and cannot help us
spend the night. Here's a man,

let's watch him and learn what he thought,
separated from his child, who chose her mother
when there was no difference.
He said, God, and it sounded
like what?
and like stop.
We mustn't let go the mother and child simply
because they wished to point at the sky.
What is the sense at the end?
The greasy soap bubbles where the creamery drained into a lake,
the grease-spot of the lake into the sky.

We sit around the fire.
Military terminology, slang, specific reference to
recent books, a grunt -- those awake
meditate on the long night
while the sleeping dream dawn.
Thus work and rest are shared.





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