Verse
Smith, LeRoy Jr. & Porter, Anne & Walsh, Jodn & Henderson, Jock & Sullivan, James
LeRoy Smith, Jr. The Last Impertinence God woke and found his dream was true: Adam had burnt the wilderness And, smug within his specialities, Was rocketing towards paradise. Damned clot, God...
...They can hope to eat fire for a day or two...
...A standard of being...
...In the name of the father, son, and Doomsday economy, may the gods rise up today...
...James Sullivan As Sun, As Sea It is easy to disturb The current in another's soul, hard To give more than you take away...
...Then he can run Without curbing the running in some other realm...
...he has begun to travel with us...
...If this inferno withers my grace, If my mind turns black and my sweat Dries saline traces onto parhced skin, If wobbing yet I plod on stubby knees...
...You stuck the gnarled root of Jesse And from it sprang this intricate grove of music Weaving a cage where the brightest nova that ever burned in the sky Sings like a thrush, sings for a poor child...
...Throwing up mty footsteps on the cold Stone fronts of houses steeped in sleep, Until they arched and tapped behind me My friend, my self, showing me the Sound of my own running, Running at my back...
...Two candles, one man, two boys, the basement smell Of fingers in the front...
...Our backs are bent, Judaicized, in worchip, grief and want of sleep...
...let the heroes strive against the blast...
...In vain, I try to separate...
...What one must do Is build his own nonentity Into a thing worth referring to...
...Overhead the incendiary solar wind glarses so Platinum hot its heat seems solid...
...Let them twist, putrify, and ripen To death under the black noon sky...
...alet the magnificent ones dangle from the meathook...
...This Mass was made for wounded only...
...Here no hats, no missals touched with silk...
...Dazzling smudge fireballs Suck up all shadows...
...Commonweal: 726...
...Let the others flee to their tunnels...
...Even so, a spirit still virile lurks within...
...but still Before me, the carrion shildren pass...
...Anne Potter The Weihnachts-Historie When you wrote the Weihnachts-Historie, Heinrich Schutz, you were near eighty...
...Damned clot, God muttered: he must know Heaven's beyond the lip of space, Beyond the last light-year's palest days And the omnipotence of choice...
...Then he can be As the sun is to earth, To the river as the sea...
...We beseech thee, powers that be, To protect the meek on their knees: Freeze them an igloo where they can stay...
...he tastes the brackish lukewarm Water, and is jarred by the humps in the stony road...
...Jack Henderson Feeling the Heat's Pyrotechnics The harsh day burns hotter than the harshest hell at the earth's core...
...Then out of his brambly, soaring and tangling triumph, strong As the holiest stones of Europe, A single voice shakes itself free, The Aramatic lullaby Floating light and alone down that travelers drink...
...We swallow strength, we sign our brows, The sun strips darkness from the street...
...From around a fire of stickes in a frozen pasture You fetch him the bleating of a wooden flutes, and the first hoarse carols...
...The light is purity's white...
...Let them try to patch the cracks in the walls As black heat flame throwers fry inner souls...
...You swaddle and cradle the child in madrigals And taking a psalm you twist hin a royal crown...
...Joan Walsh Winter Devotions: Six O'Clock Mass For a year, there, I dipped the sun Up before it, Out in the tunnel street Dark with wind, whistling with cold, running toward a door that opened Inward...
...You summon for him a river of angels that pour their voices Into his broken shelter like sparks or abundant grain...
Vol. 106 • December 1979 • No. 23
