Hector Composes a Circular Letter to His Friends to Announce His Survival of an Earthquake, 7.8 on the Richter Scale
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Mexico City. 23 September, 1985
Dear David,
Knowing that a letter from me has slightly more chance of reaching you across the world than one sent to me here (my local post office is a heap of stone), I’m preempting your question and (I trust) your concern by making the following announcement: I AM ALIVE.
That Leaf
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Windfalls
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Two Poems
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Who We Are, and Where
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An Interview with William Gass
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Anyuta
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Every sunday during winter all the townspeople emerged after an early dinner to walk along the main street.
Poets on Music
Featuring the short essays:
- Billie Holiday and Lester Young on “Me, Myself, and I” by William Matthews
- A.P. and E.D. by Charles Wright
- Ben Webster by Ira Sadoff
- Bob Dylan and the White Goddess by Richard Tillinghast
- Art Hodes by Charles Simic
- The Situation of the American Composer by Dana Gioia
Poetry Feature: Eamon Grennan
Includes the poems:
- The Cycle of Their Lives
- Walking to Work
- Traveller
- Conjunctions
- A Lack of Epitaphs
Traveller
He’s ten, travelling alone for the first time—
By bus to the city. He settles an empty seat
And waves out at where I stand on the footpath
Waiting for him to be taken. Barely a shadow
Grinning behind smoked glass. To his eyes
I am a dim figure far off, waving and smiling
In a choppy sea of traffic. Behind me, bright
As a bed of marigolds, the sun melts down
The black back of hills across the Hudson. For
All there is to say we’re deaf to one another
And despatch our love in shrugs and pantomime
Until he gives thumbs-up as the bus sighs shut,
Shuddering away from me. He mouths words I
Can’t understand; I smile back regardless,
Blowing a kiss across the air that empties
Between us. Alone, he stares out a while, admiring
His height and speed, then reads two chapters
Of The Dark Is Rising. When the real dark
Leaches in, he sees nothing but the huge loom
Of a hill, the trees’ hooded bulk and
Come-hithering shadow. He tries to curl up
In sleep, but sleep won’t come, so he presses his cheek
Flat against the cold black glass and peers out
Past his own faint ghost and up at the sky
As any night-time traveller would—as Henry Hudson
Must have, sailing his Half Moon past Poughkeepsie,
Smelling already the Pacific. My son seeks the stars
He knows: Orion with his belt, his sword, his dog
Fall into place and make some sense of the dark
Above his voyaging. When I found him, he will say,
I felt at home. And fell asleep. I imagine
Him asleep in his seat there
Like that wet sea-boy dozing at mast-head,
Whose lullaby the whole Atlantic hums
In the lull between storms, the brief peace
Between battles, no land in sight.
His Brother
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Today, the road to town is widened. Sidewalks, service stations, 7-Elevens fill the space where alfalfa fields and orange groves once spread.