Jack Gilbert
In Dispraise Of Poetry
When the King of Siam disliked a courtier, He gave him a beautiful white elephant. The miracle beast deserved such ritual That to care for him properly meant ruin. Yet to care for him
Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying
Poetry is a kind of lying, Necessarily. To profit the poet Or beauty. But also in That truth may be told only so. Those who, admirably, refuse To falsify (as those who will not
Searching For Pittsburgh
The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night, Between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart And hesitates. Considers and then goes around it. Trying to escape the mildness of our
In Umbria
Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe Watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came Out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted. She did not know what to
The Abnormal Is Not Courage
The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that
The Great Fires
Love is apart from all things. Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. It is not the body that finds love. What leads us there is the body. What is not love provokes it.
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what The heart knows. By redefining the morning, We find a morning that comes just after darkness. We can break through marriage into marriage. By insisting
Recovering Amid The Farms
Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep And two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley, Past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze. She turned twelve last year
Rain
Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all
Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer
I’d walk her home after work Buying roses and talking of Bechsteins. She was full of soul. Her small room was gorged with heat And there were no windows. She’d take off everything But
The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, And frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words Get it all wrong.