|
| |
Deep Measure
By Charles Wright
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Robert Hass
February 1, 1998
|
|
Charles Wright was born in Tennessee. He's lived for some years in
Charlottesville, Va. He's a Southern poet whose work has been, for a long
time, inflected by his love of Italian poetry and by the rhythms of Ezra
Pound, out of which he's made his own music. Some of his best poems
come from moments when his imagination seems to be idling, letting his
attention find its focus, letting the world seep in, waiting for a music to
come up. Almost like someone plucking at a guitar, waiting for the melody
to take him, to tell him who he is or where he is. Here's a poem of the
season from his new book Black Zodiac, (Farrar Straus Giroux), that's
about this process:
Deep Measure
Shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light,
Undercard of a short month, February Sunday . . .
Wordlessness of the wrong world.
In the day's dark niche, the patron saint of What-Goes-Down
Shuffles her golden deck and deals,
one for you and one for me . . .
And that's it, a single number -- we play what we get.
My hand says measure,
doves on the wire and the first bulb blades
Edging up through the mulch-mat,
Inside-out of the winter gum trees,
A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes,
Deep measure, deep measure that runnels beneath the bone,
That sways our attitude and sets our lives to music;
Deep measure, down under and death-drawn:
Pilgrim, homeboy of false time,
Listen and set your foot down, listen and step lightly.
"Deep Measure" from Black Zodiac by Charles Wright. Copyright 1997
by Charles Wright. Reprinted with permission from Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, Inc.
Robert Hass, former U.S. poet laureate, is the author, most
recently, of the collection "Sun Under Wood."
|
