Give me a thing that says nothing. The wind, for instance, A wisdom that comes from ten thousand miles to the west. The trees, for instance, stenographers Of every sentence it isn’t able to utter. The grass that assembles them all in its green pages. — Charles Wright, from “26,” Littlefoot: A… Continue reading Charles Wright
When what you write about is what you see, what do you write about when it’s dark? — Charles Wright, from “32,” Littlefoot: A Poem (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007)
The morning is almost silent and cannot declare itself. / Therefore, I say unto it, / you are the never-boring miracle / Of sunlight and scrappy cloud, / The absence of rain when rain is absent, / as it is / This morning, green with its wonderment, — Charles Wright, from “23,” Littlefoot: A Poem… Continue reading Charles Wright
Thinking about the past is inherently sentimental–one always wishes things had been more of the same, less of the same, or partially or altogether otherwise, if only because we somehow believe the past, our past, still cares for us, as we care for it. This differs it from thinking about the desert, which we know… Continue reading Charles Wright
Everything works against you The way the evening comes down Its trellises one rose at a time The watery knots of light That lap at your memory The way you thought of your life once An endless falling of seeds. — Charles Wright, from “One Two Three,” Hard Freight (Wesleyan University Press, 1973)
Still, there’s another story, that what’s inside us is what’s outside us: That what we see outside ourselves we’ll soon see inside ourselves. It’s visible, and is our garment. Better, perhaps, to wear that. Better to live as though we already lived the afterlife, Unattached to our cape of starred flesh. — Charles Wright,… Continue reading Charles Wright
The spider, juiced crystal and Milky Way, drifts on his web through the night sky And looks down, waiting for us to ascend … At dawn he is still there, invisible, short of breath, mending his net. All morning we look for the white face to rise from the lake like a tiny star. And… Continue reading Charles Wright
