I find, after all these years, I am a believer— I believe what the thunder and lightning have to say; I believe that dreams are real, and that death has two reprisals; I believe that dead leaves and black water fill my heart. I shall die like a cloud, beautiful, white, full of nothingness.… Continue reading Charles Wright
I keep on thinking. If I sit here for long enough, A line, one true line, Will rise like some miraculous fish to the surface, Brilliant and lithe in the late sunlight, And offer itself into my hands. I keep thinking that as the weeks go by, and the waters never change. —… Continue reading Charles Wright
The words, like bees in a sweet ink, cluster and drone, Indifferent, indelible, A hum and a hum: Back stairsteps to God, ropes to the glass eye: Vineyard, informer, the chair, the throne. Mojo and numberless, breaths From the wet mountains and green mouths; rustlings, Sure sleights of hand, The news that arrives from nowhere:… Continue reading Charles Wright
A Short History of the Shadow Thanksgiving, dark of the moon. Nothing down here in the underworld but vague shapes and black holes, Heaven resplendent but virtual Above me, trees stripped and triple-wired like Irish harps. Lights on Pantops and Free Bridge mirror the eastern sky. Under the bridge is the… Continue reading Charles Wright
Is it age, is it lack of adoration, is it Regret 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 going Into the deep desire of distance. — Charles Wright, “Waterfalls,” Caribou (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014)
Some lights are from stars, some from the sun And moon, and other lights are from fires. The light from the stars makes the shadow equal to the body. Light from fire makes it greater, there, under the tongue, there, under the utterance. — Charles Wright, from “A Short History of the Shadow,”… Continue reading Charles Wright
What does one say? What can one say? That death is without a metric, That it has no metaphor? That what will remain is what always remains: The snow; the dark pines, their boughs Heavy with moisture, and failing; The clearings we might have crossed; The footprints we do not leave? — Charles Wright, from… Continue reading Charles Wright
