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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
INVOCATION, by TIMOTHY LIU Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: I call upon you, voice forbidden
First Line: I call upon you, voice forbidden
I call upon you, voice forbidden
from the beginning, a sibylline spell to summon
a god -- that o-shaped flume descending
into breath's dark furnace ...
To speak in cycles of the moon, desire
thrusting upward through the hole that silence is:
how the world was filled with one sound
that splintered into the many selves we call a soul,
endless babble in the mouth of an old woman
confined to a chair on wheels --
Where am I going? Where am I
going? I am sitting here
getting older and older...
She reads no further. Outside,
children sled down hills she can no longer climb
while notes from an upright piano
drift out the window -- so meaningless, she thinks,
this hour, this music, this snow...
Or was it a dream repeating itself
through a life that escaped her attention --
an atrium of twilight where the blind are gathered,
hands groping down spiral banisters
as they ease themselves past memory's double doors.
Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org
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SENRYU: BLIND DATE by TIMOTHY LIU
READING WHITMAN IN A TOILET STALL by TIMOTHY LIU
THE MARRIAGE (1) by TIMOTHY LIU