When Pipers Remembered Babylon
‘Nebuchadnezzar’s statue stood, About as high as a false god could. The three were left with little choice. Silence after the herald’s voice.’
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Poetry
LOOKING EAST
A Yes or No answer, black or white, is
Not found staring at the ocean, much as
The sea magnetizes our attention.
It holds us more completely than we feel
It does, the ...
Poetry
AT THE CHAPEL OF THE PINK SISTERS
The crosses on the convent roofs
Gleam sharply as the sun comes up.
— Wallace Stevens, “Botanist on Alp (No. 2)”
The March wind blows past the ...
Poetry
THE SS NORMANDIE
Confiscated from Vichy France, she sat
In the Hudson for months until the fire.
The smoke was so thick over midtown, rumors
Spread the Japanese had attacked New York.
The old transatlantic ...
Poetry
YOUR MOVE
“No modern poem was ever as obscure as Miss
Sullivan’s naming water water for Helen Keller.”
– Walker Percy
When a bear hears ice crack he doesn’t listen,
He moves. He doesn’t think ...
Poetry
ALLINGER’S
Six blocks from City Hall the old Fire-Chief’s
Headquarters has granite gargoyles smiling
Over the garage doors, perhaps the last
They ever carved in Philadelphia.
They wear stone fire-fighters’ hats and one blows
Foam from ...
Poetry
THURBER’S VETERANS
They brooded on the porches of Columbus
Forty years after ’61, when they went
South, crossed the Ohio, battled the rebels
And returned. By 1900 there were
Still dozens of them left in ...
Poetry
MORE SPACE
An anthropology of space? A Cape May
Scenario: porches, hammocks, flags; lawns
Without stone ornaments, small windows
That are bow-shaped for the sea wind,
Mail boxes with salt-air-withered signs,
The pavements narrow enough for ...