American Poetry

And Auden’s face, after he came to our place, was cut from stone. But Stevens could not even ossify.

American Poetry

Jeffers answered Pound’s
  house of good stone
  each block cut smooth and well fitting
with his hands
at Tor House.
Living rock.
Granite tower.
And Auden’s face,
after he came to our place,
was cut from stone.
But Stevens could not even ossify.

The wild father would not die.
In his daughter’s castle
  1959
Pound throws
a stack of books
  Fennayosa
  and the bank cranks
onto the Rapallo stone floor
after dismissing our mother,
  St. John’s.

Time gone by.
Time gone.
And forty years on
from the woebegone welshman,
Geoffrey Hill,
  policeman’s son,
  mons mentis,
comes to Boston
to wring lilies from stones
and wrings them
in debt to Edward Thomas,
his English Pegúy.
What would Sir Christopher say?
  The hill's high shape may long outstand
  The house, of slowly-wasting stone.

Oddly, our poets sit alone.
Making a waste
while wind carves us
a sandstone sepulcher
out in Kentucky’s caves.

That jar in Tennessee sits still
upon a hill
in what was once outside.
Out and in.
The chief poetic sin is to elide.
No need for haste or ruin or hiding.
But hope instead.
They’re all dead.
The field is open.