perfect poems

…After the first death there is no other.
             —Dylan Thomas

When the hawk slaked down into the garden and entered
the chittering bud of linnets and sparrows
feeding on the bread crumbs and stale cereal, you
were telling me the story
of how you took it upon yourself to bury, as you would
in the weeks to come most of your own platoon, the young
German—the first man you ever killed—
shot on the concrete forecourt of a textile factory
in Belgium. At close range. With a single bullet.
I need to believe you spent the war
safe from yourself, in reserve, your rifle clean
and unfired; that you woke each morning
alone and hard in your own hand. But the tautness
of his skin dropped away like a sail losing the wind and the wet
purse of his mouth went slack and eased open
to reveal its neat, stained wreaths of change.
After the first death there were many others and they all

rose up through this one. Out in the garden the hawk
rowed up from the earth with its burden, leaving
a panic the colour of ashes and bone. A slim warmth

was caught in the fabric of his battle dress, there were twigs
and feathers of grass in his hair; and when you dragged
him the dark palm of the earth snagged
him by the heels and eased his boots off. But you were tired
and the grave so shallow and small his knees rose up
through the dirt. To shovel soil across his face, you said, dead
as he was, to throw dirt into the gape of his mouth and over
the pale noose of each iris was an act of infidelity
against your own humanity far worse
than squeezing the trigger. That night, laid out
beneath the empty looms of the factory, you dreamt
about that grave at the edge of the wood from which the knees
of a dead man rose like breasts through the dirt and when dawn
came you were ravenous for a woman. Not sex,
but the easy kindness that stands in attendance
whenever women are present. You are married, you said,
to the first man you ever kill, and then you went outside
to gather even the smallest feathers that had drifted
and caught against the hedge. Still, after sixty years,
the terrible competency of your hands. You spaced
those small feathers widely, like seeds, in the wet soil
and were down on your knees so long the mist and the sea fret
stashed their silver among the fine hairs of your jacket.
A man, however well he lives, never lives
his life well enough to justify the harm he commits
with his own hands: he bent at the knees so slowly, you said,
then folded forward gently, with a sigh, like a woman’s dress. 

There was earth inside them, and
they dug.

They dug and dug, and so
their day went past, their night. And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, witnessed all this.

They dug and heard nothing more;
they did not grow wise, invented no song,
devised for themselves no sort of language.
They dug.

There came a stillness then, came also storm,
all of the oceans came.
I dig, you dig, and it, the worm, digs too,
and the singing there says: They dig.

O one, O none, O no one, O you:
Where did it go, then, making for nowhere?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig through to you,
and the ring on our finger awakens.

-Paul Celan

I received a letter in the mail, 
informing me that my friend has disappeared into Nepal.
It says, after boarding a train in Patan, 

he was never heard from again.   

I have considered flying
into the Kathmandu valley
to look for him

but I cannot afford to be lost,
among all those prayer flags and
 protests.


To find him, years later
at the Namche Bazaar.
Breathing thin air and
buying provisions. 

Because I would ask
if he ever made it up to the top
of Sagarmāthā, or any others. 


And I cannot afford
to be asked the same.

(found on the website for paper darts magazine [their tumblr])

As a perfume doth remain 
In the folds where it hath lain, 
So the thought of you, remaining 
Deeply folded in my brain, 
Will not leave me; all things leave me -
You remain. 

Other thoughts may come and go, 
Other moments I may know 
That shall waft me, in their going, 
As a breath blown to and fro, 
Fragrant memories; fragrant memories 
Come and go. 

Only thoughts of you remain 
In my heart where they have lain, 
Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining, 
A hid sweetness, in my brain. 
Others leave me; all things leave me -
You remain. 

chrstn:

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I’d opened it a thousand times
to see if what I’d written here was right,
it’s all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.

~ Ted Kooser, Pocket Poem

sometimesagreatnotion:

Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.

- Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance: Stories