Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart

Author:Frank Bidart
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374713386
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THINGS FALLING FROM GREAT HEIGHTS

Spasm of vision you crave like a secular pentecost

The subject of this poem

is how much the spaces that you now move in

cost

the spaces that you were

given

were born to and like an animal used but then ran from

ran from but then thought you had

transformed

enough to accede to

the choices you made to inhabit the spaces where you

when prompted repeat the story of how you arrived

they cost your life

O RUIN O HAUNTED

O ruin O haunted

restless remnant of

two bodies, two

histories

you felt the unceasing

force of

but never understood,—

terrified that without an

x-ray, a topography of

their souls

you must repeat their lives.

•

You did not repeat their lives.

You lodged your faith

in Art—

which gives us

pattern, process

with the flesh

still stuck to it.

With flesh, you

told yourself, pattern

is truer, subtler, less

given to the illusion

seeing frees you from it.

•

Or, you did repeat their lives,—

… repeated them by

inverting them.

How you hurtled yourself against, how

cunningly you

failed to elude love.

•

Love

is the manna

that falling

makes you

see

the desert

surrounding you

is a desert.

Makes you think dirt is not where you were born.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.