Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NEAR PAH-GOTZIN-KAY, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NEAR PAH-GOTZIN-KAY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dry birch logs
Last Line: I'm going to sleep with miss rock the rest of the winter
Subject(s): China


I.
BABES IN THE WOODS

Dry birch logs:
Blue flame and incense.
Everything we need to say written in smoke
Now on these burning sheets.

Understand how we got here:
Parachuted in from a disastrous sector
Of the contemporary war.
Lost our clothes in the freezing cold -- she did, so I threw mine away --
And here we are in front of the fire in the cabin.
Wood enough for the week.
Moon in Scorpio over the frozen lake
And the wolves singing around us,
Nothing to read but Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Seems simple; but wait till the neighbors come over.
They want to play whist -- and that's hard: holding all those cards
In our hands and teeth
And trying to bid while the other hand holds our blanket
(And whose hand is that?) to cover what they call our nakedness --
Something that seems to us like our own selves --
Something, in the long nights,
We wrap ourselves in.

This game can go on a long time.
Looks like we'll never win.

II.
GOING FOR WATER

In the morning the snow is deeper
And the river is sleeping a cold sleep.
"Come back in summer," Water says, from somewhere in bed;
"I'm going to sleep with Miss Rock the rest of the winter."


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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