Excerpt from 'Just in Time: Poems 1984-1994'
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Chapter One
Contents
Preface: Conversations with Charles Bernstein........................1 Memory Gardens......................................................33 Windows.............................................................91 Echoes.............................................................205 Index..............................................................295 Acknowledgments....................................................305
Chapter One
HEAVEN KNOWS
Seemingly never until one's dead
but of what then or for what
attended the living with misunderstanding
one could care for any of them
FORTY
The forthright, good-natured faith
forty stories with roof scaffolding
good warm face, black hair,
the firemen appeared, he said
glad not to be there alone.
He has friends to believe in,
OUT
Within pitiless
NEW ENGLAND
Work, Christian, work!
TOO LATE
You tried to answer the questions attractively, what you hoped life would prove,
your so-called billfold an umbilical,
all your sad life, all your vulnerability,
brown hair, brown eyes, steady,
ROOM
Quick stutters of incidental
and forth, quick
of the meat, two
snowstorm, death, a girl
than these leaves of
water, empty passageway,
HOTEL
It isn't in the world of
or memories, nothing
It's snowing in Toronto.
and the tv looks like a faded
you know are down the hall,
you're alone, and that's happy.
ECHO
Pushing out from
time makes
empty, again
EARTH
And as the world is flat or round
of actual water, actual earth,
I think no rock's hardness,
be only here as and forever |