After Tofu Mantra II
American Typewriter
Delivery Boy
Ecosphere
Flashback
Green Aquarium
Had I Been Any God of Power
How Chung’s Sister Got Her Name
I Want Candy
I’m Going To Let You Go, Okay?
Natural Resources
Of This Earth
Out of Egypt
Remembering Roundness
Spectres
The Installation
The Star of David
To Ply
Uncle
When They Go
When They Go
Elizabeth Spires
“…one felt there was no one to ask about anything.
Up to then, one felt someone knew.”
Ezra Pound on the death of Henry James
When all of them are gone, who
then shall we ask? The mountains
finally flattened, the statuary pulled
down, will we stand among the rubble
that spoke to us once, picking up
this stone and that, wondering what
there is left to say? Once, each
of our trusting hands found the waiting
hand of one of the ones who knew.
Now each burnished name floats
in ether without a face to match it to.
Like parents or constellations, for as
long as we could remember, they were
there as we struggled and fell and gasped.
Now, without a glance backward,
without an adieu!, they have vanished,
and we, who will never be monuments,
have become the caretakers. It is left
for each of us to speak, to falteringly
speak, to the ones left in our charge:
Children, though you mistake me
for someone else, I will find
whatever it is you have lost.
Here, let us go on together.
For a little while, let us go on.
Read more »
Up to then, one felt someone knew.”
Ezra Pound on the death of Henry James
When all of them are gone, who
then shall we ask? The mountains
finally flattened, the statuary pulled
down, will we stand among the rubble
that spoke to us once, picking up
this stone and that, wondering what
there is left to say? Once, each
of our trusting hands found the waiting
hand of one of the ones who knew.
Now each burnished name floats
in ether without a face to match it to.
Like parents or constellations, for as
long as we could remember, they were
there as we struggled and fell and gasped.
Now, without a glance backward,
without an adieu!, they have vanished,
and we, who will never be monuments,
have become the caretakers. It is left
for each of us to speak, to falteringly
speak, to the ones left in our charge:
Children, though you mistake me
for someone else, I will find
whatever it is you have lost.
Here, let us go on together.
For a little while, let us go on.