Hymns & Qualms

New and Selected Poems and Translations

By Peter Cole

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright © 2017 Peter Cole

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-374-71578-6

CHAPTER 1

New Poems, New Translations

THROUGH THE SLAUGHTER

and Bialik

Contain a God?

Expose a Source?

What will is known?

Does it touch a throne?

Can we see a crown?

pierced

to receive that flight,

what light gets in?

What's left of sin?

What cause is served?

What cry is heard?

When the blood of infants

and elders spurts

across T-shirts

does it figure forever?

As it wreaks its change

and seeks revenge

abyss?

Could Satan devise

vengeance like this —

war which is just ...

an art of darkness?

Have mercy, skies.

homage to Morton Feldman —

"before the oracle, with the flowers"

1 KINGS 7:49

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

is a breeze.

9.

10.

(Continues...)

Hymns & Qualms by

Peter Cole. Copyright © 2017 Peter Cole. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.