Is it age, is it lack of adoration, is itRegret there’s no ladder to the clouds?Whatever, we inhabit the quotidian, as we must,While somewhere behind our backs, waterfalls tumble and keep on goingInto the deep desire of distance. — Charles Wright, “Waterfalls,” Caribou (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014)
Tonight, only memories are my company and my grace. / How nice if they could outlive us. — Charles Wright, from “Grace II,” Caribou: Poems (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2014)
Desire, at last, a remembered landscape, and never the same hurt twice. — Charles Wright, from “Charles Wright and the 940 Locust Avenue Heraclitean Rhythm Band,” Buffalo Yoga (Farrar, Straus, and Grioux, 2004)
The formalist implications of the afterlife Seem to reveal, so far, one star and a black voyage To discover our names, Our real names, imperishably inscribed in the registry of light, From which all letters befall. And that suits me for the time being, Afternoon’s alphabet beginning to firm up in the field, Such… Continue reading Charles Wright
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
