Today is June, but cooler.
China, in the shape of a cloud, is up there.
Yesterday the sun beat down and people were having heart attacks.
Cloudiness has come to save us.
A generation is on the brink. Boomer poets, proudly incomprehensible,
the ones who got the prizes and the recognition,
the ones I envied, are old and sick or dead.
It is cooler today. They say
a cool rain is coming. Always strange when summer finds us indoors!
When the Guelphs faced exile, Popes, bankers, and poets made deals
with ambassadors upon illuminated manuscripts. Poetry and politics were the same.
What shall preserve my poetry? Build your books from sterner stuff.
The “Sweet New Style” of Dante
swam in cool grottos. The chief fault the poets correct needn’t be mentioned.
The poetry is enough.
Of all the metaphors, I must confess,
the one which struck me most: “the wages of sin is death.”
Three days of cool rains predicted.
This kind of thing still matters in a comforting, old-fashioned, way.
“Rains bring the slightly right-wing.”
Bending my neck back, turning my head, to and fro.
“How far does China go?”
When I heard about Martin Amis. When I read about Jorie Graham,
I remembered them. They gave readings, imperious, in Harvard Square.
I ran all the way from Central.
The cowardice of insanity is not just here.
It’s in the sun. It’s everywhere.