Mark Strand

Keeping Things Whole

In a field I am the absence Of field. This is Always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air And always The air moves

Coming To This

We have done what we wanted. We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry Of each other, and we have welcomed grief And called ruin the impossible habit to break. And now we are

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad And she walks

The Story Of Our Lives

1 We are reading the story of our lives Which takes place in a room. The room looks out on a street. There is no one there, No sound of anything. The tress are

My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer

1 When the moon appears And a few wind-stricken barns stand out In the low-domed hills And shine with a light That is veiled and dust-filled And that floats upon the fields, My mother,

Giving Myself Up

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs. I give up my tongue. I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue. I give up my throat which is

Courtship

There is a girl you like so you tell her Your penis is big, but that you cannot get yourself To use it. Its demands are ridiculous, you say, Even self-defeating, but to be

The Remains

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets. I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album

A Piece Of The Storm

For Sharon Horvath From the shadow of domes in the city of domes, A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room And made its way to the arm of the chair where

So You Say

It is all in the mind, you say, and has Nothing to do with happiness. The coming of cold, The coming of heat, the mind has all the time in the world. You take

Someone was saying Something about shadows covering the field, about How things pass, how one sleeps towards morning And the morning goes. Someone was saying How the wind dies down but comes back, How

The New Poetry Handbook

1 If a man understands a poem, he shall have troubles. 2 If a man lives with a poem, he shall die lonely. 3 If a man lives with two poems, he shall be

Lines For Winter

Tell yourself As it gets cold and gray falls from the air That you will go on Walking, hearing The same tune no matter where You find yourself Inside the dome of dark Or

The Dreadful Has Already Happened

The relatives are leaning over, staring expectantly. They moisten their lips with their tongues. I can feel Them urging me on. I hold the baby in the air. Heaps of broken bottles glitter in

The Room

It is an old story, the way it happens Sometimes in winter, sometimes not. The listener falls to sleep, The doors to the closets of his unhappiness open And into his room the misfortunes

Answers

Why did you travel? Because the house was cold. Why did you travel? Because it is what I have always done between sunset and sunrise. What did you wear? I wore a blue suit,