Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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OCTOBER THOUGHTS IN WAR-TIME What does October mean? To the old Bolshevik the month we finally took what was ours — to the old émigré the month we lost everything, and had to flee to the border. To the Spanish and Portuguese, Italians and Greeks, taking café in treeless plazas, the aftermath of equinox, a few brown slurries of oak leaves skittering from Alps to the sea, not a time, but a passing, To the Chinese, a mottled dream of maple, gingko, ailanthus and willow, in which one pale and angular scholar, his beard as thin as an artist’s brush, takes tea in his gazebo, as the autumn’s white tiger runs down the bounding deer. For me, in this New England city, it is not quite autumn. I spy the moon’s new crisped crescent hovering above the Hopkins house. An angry Mars is at its nearest — all these heavenly bodies tugging at treetops. <strong>The</strong> Unitarian bell tolls eight, as Uranus, a dim flickering, grazes the steeple as though curious to know for whom the clabber sounds the bronze. <strong>The</strong> weary earth has had enough explosions. Winter will yield up autumn, if autumn will erase its merry carnage. If leaves do not fall, perhaps the heads of state will leave decisions undecided,
prisoners un-decapitated, toxins unmanufactured, uranium un-enriched — perhaps the deadly elements will go unmined, the gray bombers unmanufactured, the hateful thought, snug in its walnut, from its high branch unfalling. RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE by BRETT RUTH
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CONTENTS AUTUMN POEMS 13 October Is
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184 The McWilliams’ Coffee Table
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE
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drifting ghostlike and invisible on
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3 Listen! October is coming! It wil
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THE STATE VERSUS AUTUMN RESOLVED: F
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NOT YEARS ENOUGH How many autumns m
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THE SAILOR AND THE OAK NYMPHS Oak w
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then turning to mockery of his all
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END OF THE WORLD Not with a trumpet
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Stockbrokers adjusted their power t
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THE OUTSIDER Some say that spring i
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oll in this new moon blanket with m
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waiting for the bat, the creeping m
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I waited, I waited — He never arr
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THE ARGUMENT “Two decades ago tha
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AVOIDING THE MUSE Silent this voice
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The clouds make way, open a blue do
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WRITER’S BLOCK For Barbara A. Hol
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This state of things will never do!
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BOARD GAME It is a game that never
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CREATION REVISITED 1 According to U
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But now the horizon rages with whir
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Is it invisible, this imago of Wint
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(the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
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The does take bubble baths. At dusk
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ECLIPSE How like the moon, that sul
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EDGAR AND HELEN Edgar Allan Poe and
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2 Moon and the flames of candled gl
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3 Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
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One truck hurtling toward gates lik
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These crows are not informers. A sh
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eside him, “Comrade, what if I cr
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And then he will send them away, do
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You have become an allergy, an anti
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IVAN GROZNI Ivan Grozni Tyrant of t
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Yet who are these ghosts that crowd
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dust devil’s playground when all
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Winter is honest, at least, the bui
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all now are only names in peeling p
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PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
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JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sig
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Stalinists and Maoists, Progressive
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THE EVANGELICALS ARE COMING! Who ne
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BLUMENSTÜCKE The parlor frowned wi
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The combinations were shocking as s
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ROADSIDE VIEWS It is the way of tra
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RUINS Passing the gutted neighborho
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WATER SPRITE Who made you, this ful
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It draws us, real and unreal mortal
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Time is an endless line wound in a
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A shaman sat here, useless for hunt
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AT THE COKE OVENS I wanted to see m
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I played here as a child, amid the
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Moving to field and orchard, Ben na
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THE CEMETERY BY THE LAKE Edinboro L
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I miss that tree. If one of the gra
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You did not know the gourd was holl
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who lured me with promises and sea-
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In the scant shade of his splintere
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It was you who raised the child in
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GANYMEDE 1 Night after night the pa
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2 The boy felt the tense of lightni
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Beauty too soft for marble, subtle
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5 He summons the troupe of ageless
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The boy did not resist, but let his
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8 Ganymede thinks only of Zeus. No
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10 I like to think of the gods stil
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THE RANSOM OF GANYMEDE 1 THE TEMPLE
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2 THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS It is a plac
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“What would we shepherds want wit
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With this, the Sybil collapses unco
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enduring the seismic embrace of her
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Yet Hera hesitates. She knows the G
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and there, trembling and pale, the
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3 GANYMEDE’S PLEA Ganymede offers
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a plaything, upstart and crude. Jea
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“It’s really a mercy I turn the
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T H I N G S S E E N I N G R A V E Y
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2 SACRIFICE Before a cenotaph in ci
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(Silt, fish, flotsam flow from Youg
Page 173 and 174: 4 NIGHT SHIFT At two in the morning
Page 175 and 176: They watch for a long time, wait fo
Page 177 and 178: An ectoplasmic virgin blushes, aver
Page 179 and 180: for this night of nights, summer’
Page 181 and 182: 8 SALEM At Salem the burying ground
Page 183 and 184: 9 THE FORGOTTEN GRAVESTONE At Swan
Page 185 and 186: THE McWILLIAMS’ COFFEE TABLE So t
Page 187 and 188: SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
Page 189 and 190: 3 Things go wrong at the American b
Page 191 and 192: Never knew what hit them or how a b
Page 193 and 194: Who wrote the note? The blonde on t
Page 195 and 196: T H U N D E R P U S S: I N M E M O
Page 197 and 198: We keep our vigil against the time
Page 199 and 200: yet terrified, into the hands of th
Page 201 and 202: nothing would daunt your interest i
Page 203 and 204: I watched you dreaming: the twitch
Page 205 and 206: 7 We became one person, shards of t
Page 207 and 208: It was not done in a daze. The sun
Page 209 and 210: A T L O V E C R A F T ’S G R A V
Page 211 and 212: 2 We stand about, a handful swellin
Page 213 and 214: Earth reels beneath our feet into t
Page 215 and 216: 5 Later a golden moon lifts up, swo
Page 217 and 218: LOW TIDE “The tide was flowing ou
Page 219 and 220: Then why should a fireball plummet
Page 221 and 222: In the stillness of museum night, t
Page 223: And there, the steeple on distant F
Page 227 and 228: a literary man, to be sure, a lawye
Page 229 and 230: “I fear the wine speaks now. Perh
Page 231 and 232: Here Pabodie would say no more, but
Page 233 and 234: unquenchable, to fall into her arms
Page 235 and 236: and flying across the parlor to him
Page 237 and 238: so that these seeds transcend to se
Page 239 and 240: HERE AT THE POINT Secret transcript
Page 241 and 242: Those Lovecraft fans are the worst.
Page 243 and 244: TO THE ARC OF THE SUBLIME In nights
Page 245 and 246: We are the scourge of entropy. We s
Page 248 and 249: ABOUT THE POEMS The following notes
Page 250 and 251: DEER HUNTERS was inspired by a trip
Page 252 and 253: INDIAN ROCK SHELTER recounts an eve
Page 254 and 255: SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
Page 256 and 257: ABOUT THE POET Brett Rutherford, bo
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