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Monday, 22 March 2010

Now She Dwells Here


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File:Biogradska suma.jpg




It was the work of fortune

which brings joy and not pain only.

But can a winged thing become less?


She lived on E. 75th Street

to speak plainly.


I mean: in the divisiveness of love

two people pass through

the same instant separately


for all their awareness sighs

for life and not for each other

but in doing that it does.




1968



Old growth European Beech forest, Biogradska National Park, Montenegro: photo by Snezana Trifunovic, 2007

8 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Beautiful poem, Tom, especially coming after Wyatt yesterday (and chess board day before), with photo (such ancient trees "of beechen green and shadows numberless"!) -- and what a surprise to see "1968" (when I thought it was today)!

3.22

pink edge of grey cloud above blackness
of ridge, motion of black pine branches
in foreground, wave sounding in channel

impulse to make image clear,
methods are inadequate

collapse, effect of present
world, quotation marks

grey-white sky on horizon next to point,
shadowed canyon of ridge across from it

Tom Raworth said...

1968 is ever today

TC said...

Steve, Tom,

Hello hello.

collapse, effect of present
world, quotation marks

Yes, it's the collapse that's to blame. The effect of the present world is to forever eject "me", too, back into 1968.

Ah, here in 1968 it is always the old growth forest of Montenegro.

With wave sounding in channel.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Love your comment on "Pillow" --"On the one hand, private joy. On the other, public chaos all around us. The Vietnam war was raging. Martin Luther King had just been shot, there were riots, LBJ had gone on tv, obviously under great stress, to say he would not stand for re-election." Who would believe it, and yet are things any different today (yes & at the same time it's still "public chaos all around").

~otto~ said...

"I mean: in the divisiveness of love

two people pass through

the same instant separately"

You are killing me softly, Tom. Killing me softly. This is one of my favorites. Stellar. I can keep going with the superlatives, but that would get weird.

TC said...

Weird, maybe.

Wonderful, definitely.

(That whooshing sound is modesty flying out the window...)

Otto, let's do a lite beer commercial together someday. Would give me an excuse to say, I love you, man.

Anonymous said...

love this poem Tom...it is romantic and intriguing...may I put it in my poem blog?

TC said...

Por supuesto, mi amiga.