To Those Who Follow in Our Wake

To Those Who Follow in Our Wake

I. Truly, I live in dark times! An artless word is foolish. A smooth forehead Points to insensitivity. He who laughs Has not yet received The terrible news. What times are these, in which A conversation about trees is almost a crime For in doing so we maintain our...
What Kind of Times Are These?

What Kind of Times Are These?

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the...
My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Although I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what’s happened to me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for...
Landmarks

Landmarks

I am wary of the dangers of fetishizing dialect and archaism – all that mollocking and sukebinding Stella Gibbons spoofed so brilliantly in Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Wary, too, of being seen to advocate a tyranny of the nominal – a taxonomic need to point and name,...
Stay Home

Stay Home

I will wait here in the fieldsto see how well the rainbrings on the grass.In the labor of the fieldslonger than a man’s lifeI am at home. Don’t come with me.You stay home too. I will be standing in the woodswhere the old treesmove only with the windand then with...