Poet's Choice By Robert Pinsky

not often enough in exalting, but courting, yes,

and combat; so often in combat, in rancor, in rage,

we rarely even remember what error or lie

set off this phase of our seeming to have to slaughter.

Not leaves then, which after all in their season

give themselves to the hammer of winter,

become sludge, become muck, become mulch,

while we, still seething, broiling, stay as we are,

vexation and violence, ax, atom, despair.

The all but casual nerviness of beginning a stanza "Humans can be like that" -- the tone of inward musing or intimate conversation -- earns its way with distinctive language such as "capricious, aswirl."

The vitality of these phrases sometimes traces back to little echoes or overtones in words, not necessarily conscious in writer or reader: "Capricious" may have a subliminal suggestion of Capricorn, that sexy goat, leaping like these leaves. "Tremendous" comes from the root of "trembling," so that "exalting in the tremendousness of their being" suggests vibration, as well as scale. And the repeated "exalting," which possibly looks as if it should be "exulting," suggests both the altitude of "exalting" and the acrobatic leaping (as in "saltimbanque" and "somersault," words that are cousins of "exulting").

The unresting turbulence of human life, its violence and eroticism commingled, makes the poet say, "Not leaves then"-- we are more endlessly disturbed than the leaves in the wind. Running through the poem, along with that despairing perception of pointlessness, is the counter-energy of meaning, animating the words themselves. The closing series, "vexation and violence, ax, atom, despair," has a voluble brilliance, a resourcefulness that does not exactly redeem the destruction it names, but challenges and tempers it with the act of definition. The importance and scope of that act justify the term "global."

(C.K. Williams's poems "Cassandra, Iraq" and "Leaves" can be found in his book "Collected Poems." Farrar Straus Giroux. Copyright 2006 by C.K. Williams.)