Classic and Contemporary Poetry
USES OF THE LOST POETS, by THOMAS MCGRATH Poet's Biography First Line: The poems of others he clipped and saved in those distant summers Last Line: To save the lonesome traveller lost on the nightbound roads Subject(s): Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
The poems of others he clipped and saved in those distant summers -- No farther from him than himself -- have faded into the dark, Almost . . . the dew that died on the dry page weathering away -- Our of its image -- to climb the ladder of sun and wind To the cradling sea gathered; and the metaphorical diamond, That once worked names on glass, gone back to the soft country Of carbon, memory, letters . . . to the wounds of the bituminous man. Child of fancy, what did you hope from those distant voices Crying immortal anguish in the fallen world of your desk Abandoned, now? Oh, the boy was only trying To climb on the dewy stairs of the poem his contemporary built Toward the sound of a friend, perhaps, or the name cut into glass, some . . . Thing to hold more permanent than a flower pressed in a book -- If the firefly is summer, the poem might be the star of time. A century of cicadas has burnt holes in those paper heavens In the few breaths that he drew while the poems lay curled in sleep, In his grave notebook saved -- gone into time like smoke With the winking generations of the firefly, the dew, the impermanent Diamond . . . And now he must fly his own kite in the dark of the moon To gather what lightning may lead him dangerously out of that dark And up the homing stairway to set a light on his desk. For he is no boy, now, but himself the bituminous man: Burning: and not to be diamond but for usefulness of that light -- His own -- for others: the wink and bite of international Code to guide or home on for those on blind ways: to save (Now that stars fall, the zodiac shifts and the lodestar drifts and lies) Or hope to save (from loss and terror of these times) To save the lonesome traveller lost on the nightbound roads. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB ODE FOR THE AMERICAN DEAD IN ASIA by THOMAS MCGRATH |
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