Jared Smith
I Wish That You Were Here in Spring
Your letter comes in sunset,
outlining every reed along the shore. I walk along the dock beyond our cabin, spreading my arms to become the light and shadow filtering these aging boards A merganser flashes down from the low hanging clouds, sears between evening and autumn's red haze, lands in a bright spume of light and dives beneath the waves. He will come up somewhere, his red head now dark against his dark plumage, his throat filled with straining fish going into night. I wish we had come to this, because even in this distant time the scent of your body still enfolds me. but the wind is blowing into evening, and in evening mists rise from this lake, erasing first the distant shores, then the trees, the fox that comes down to drink, eyes bright, ghostly; finally the single man who steps out into the white, swirling darkness |
In the Plate Glass Window Factory
In the plate glass window factory they watch reflections of sky
and melt down silicon mountains before coffee break. The sun rises and sets in iron vats. It is contained. In the plate glass window factory they build liquid frames for pictures of farm houses where the farmer rises early in the morning or for train cars that ensnare the mountains of a continent and for young women baking bread in little towns of red brick homes. In the plate glass window factory as the day goes on the breathing hardens and they pour their crystal lakes into featureless trays which can be filled with anything, sweeping time from the floorboards and cutting it out to hang on walls. And in the plate glass window factory, the workers never go home, not even when they fish dark rivers beneath the stars. |
The Word That Had Many Voices
The word became a long drawn howling wind
stripping the flesh from men and babies and women.
It beat against the small bones of their inner ears,
and wailed into a crescendo of fear and hunger
that permeated every thought. The word
that was a simple follow-up to a smile between strangers
was gentle when it began and planted grains on dry land.
Bringing water it began to whisper and think on its own,
but it sounded gentle in the distance among the grasses
where the grasses took on life of their own and whispered back.
They whispered to the intestines of dairy cows, and milk flowed sweet
while the word formed another mouth to sound its need. The word
found its way around campfires on cold desert nights,
easing its way into the mind, burrowing into the earth,
melting down land where the grass would grow, setting up dichotomy,
it began to form lunch buckets and assembly lines which broke only
each day as evening swept new words across the prairies speaking
first by dream and then by horse and then by train and then by car and then
by jet and then by robot where the word became electronic data interchange,
where it sang the song of Circes lulling pigs to sleep while it built upon itself
three billion voices building the machinery of a word that could no longer be discerned.
There were so many ululations in the word that it beat a timpani within itself
and the timpani became another word, no longer a timid smile,
nor an engineering term, nor political solace, nor trade-off any longer, nor
the word in the beginning.
stripping the flesh from men and babies and women.
It beat against the small bones of their inner ears,
and wailed into a crescendo of fear and hunger
that permeated every thought. The word
that was a simple follow-up to a smile between strangers
was gentle when it began and planted grains on dry land.
Bringing water it began to whisper and think on its own,
but it sounded gentle in the distance among the grasses
where the grasses took on life of their own and whispered back.
They whispered to the intestines of dairy cows, and milk flowed sweet
while the word formed another mouth to sound its need. The word
found its way around campfires on cold desert nights,
easing its way into the mind, burrowing into the earth,
melting down land where the grass would grow, setting up dichotomy,
it began to form lunch buckets and assembly lines which broke only
each day as evening swept new words across the prairies speaking
first by dream and then by horse and then by train and then by car and then
by jet and then by robot where the word became electronic data interchange,
where it sang the song of Circes lulling pigs to sleep while it built upon itself
three billion voices building the machinery of a word that could no longer be discerned.
There were so many ululations in the word that it beat a timpani within itself
and the timpani became another word, no longer a timid smile,
nor an engineering term, nor political solace, nor trade-off any longer, nor
the word in the beginning.
The poems above are published with the poet's permission from The Collected Poems: 1971 - 2011