Saturday, July 3, 2010

a little bit of Death Tractates

*by Brenda Hillman, of course*

A Dwelling

--And in the central valley,
people were dreaming of peaches.
Starlings ate the scalloped edges off new blossoms.
In the night orchards,
the dreamer walked over hot coals with the poems
and made creation seem effortless--there!

What do you fear in a poem?

(I fear the moment of excess, as in March,
when oxalis comes out all in one day.)

What do you fear in the poem?

(I fear that moment of withholding--
especially inside what I thought was free;
and I feared the poem was just like her,
that it would abandon me--)