Rosmarie Waldrop

ANY SINGLE THING

Is so complicated we can talk about it only by a little shove with the knee. The cry of the gulls. The line between water and grammar. Horizon and interpretation. Between two blues. Field of error. My gestures not my own. Desire not a color. And the sound of the sea. Listen.

OFFERS OF SKY

Even a slight curvature in the path of the light will produce dim shapes of possibles. Night minus tears. Or where. The shared adventure. Or amaranth, love-lies-ableeding. Who sings this song? Who talks desire? And she for use as long as. High in the air. Or clouds.

THE EQUATION MUST BE BEAUTIFUL

Allow the first look its density. Before what words make of it. Or often, gusts of wind. Light compact in comparison. With what? Inert reason? But I admit that everything is interrelated. On the model of language. The lovers on the park bench, the bakery, the shadows playing on the wall. Breath quenched in multiple directions.

Author: Rosmarie Waldrop

Rosmarie Waldrop, poet, translator, and editor, has been a force in American poetry for forty years. Waldrop is coeditor and publisher of Burning Deck Press, as well as the author or coauthor of over 17 books of poetry, two novels, and three books of criticism. She has received numerous awards and fellowships and was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She was elected to the American academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006 and received the PEN Award for Poetry Translation for her translation of Ulf Stolterfoht’s book Lingos I – IX in 2008. Her most recent work is Driven to Abstraction, published by New Directions in 2010.

Plume: Issue #9 March 2012