we should build 6 books

on listening to Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello

out in the living room
Rostropovich is playing
Bach’s cello suites
he takes the first
at breakneck tempo
the familiar intervals
whipping by as if heard
from the window
of a passing automobile
while in the bedroom
two bodies entwine
smiling laughing sighing
heat pours off the radiator
onto already sweaty skin
as the cello comes
to the climactic end
of the 1st suite
in the silence her yes
slips out softly
his low note of passion
as they begin again
masked by the climbing vine
growing from the cello
at the start of the 2nd suite

                           Jason Crane

.....

america

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.





                                         Claude McKay










....

METAPHYSICS AND ONTOLOGY

                     RETURN TO ST. THOMAS                              

Here we are, with four children, at late Mass,
   The nave a bloated hull of tin, the cross
   Dangling from double chains, its weight of loss
Moored in midair as listing decades pass.
A few gray heads, behind, recall a past
   When the bright sharded window cast its gloss
   On pews packed full: however time’s waves toss
The Church, it’d bear its people to the last.

That’s not the obvious lesson it once seemed,
   As I turn toward strange faces offering peace,
   And fail to find those who were borne with me
Through all the sacraments, those taught to see,
   In every fall, love’s chance to be redeemed,
   Never thinking all prayer might simply cease.

—James Matthew Wilson

...

a sort of pedestrian faith

     THE VOICE OF GOD             



N inety percent of what’s wrong with you
    could be cured with a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.
    but we want magic, to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
    (Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace
the suffering.) The voice of God does not pander,
    offers no five year plan, no long-term
solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local.
    Don’t look for your initials in the geese
honking overhead or to see thru the glass even
    darkly. It says the most obvious crap—
put down that gun, you need a sandwich.





                                                  Mary Karr








...

of time enrapt

      A Girl by Ezra Pound                                  

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

.....

girls swimming in the desert sun walking

      Breakdown                                                                                   


 Asphalt stretches for miles ahead of us
 summer vapor rising in a desert 
dream of water. My mother undresses 

my sister and dry wind rustles her hair. 
We leave a small shirt stretched across
 the asphalt. Miles ahead of in humid air, 

stack of slender cumulus 
wait like women in a seagirt dream,
 sisters of water, their sundresses 

in threads of thin floccus. 
We walk near cholla

 with razor throats asphalt miles ahead 
stretching us to indefinite shadows, borderless
as horizons in the blanched desert, waterless 

mother. Dreary under dresses 
fabric brittle as sand, we sweat grace to a grizzle in the heat, 
like salty dirt in asphalt stretching for miles ahead of us.
 Dreaming of water, my mother undresses.

                                         Janet Zupan










....

from Riding the North Boy 40

https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/James_Welch_(poet)?file="The_Wrath_of_Lester_Lame_Bull,"_by_James_Welch



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