Robert Pinsky
Ode To Meaning
Dire one and desired one, Savior, sentencer In an old allegory you would carry A chained alphabet of tokens: Ankh Badge Cross. Dragon, Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio, Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Poem With Refrains
The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog Uncurling over the tainted city river, A young girl rowing and her anxious father Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer
Ginza Samba
A monosyllabic European called Sax Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone Widening
Shirt
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money
The Night Game
Some of us believe We would have conceived romantic Love out of our own passions With no precedents, Without songs and poetry Or have invented poetry and music As a comb of cells for
To Television
Not a “window on the world” But as we call you, A box a tube Terrarium of dreams and wonders. Coffer of shades, ordained Cotillion of phosphors Or liquid crystal Homey miracle, tub Of
Impossible To Tell
to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn, Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon; In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter, The
At Pleasure Bay
In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice. Here under the pines a little off the road In 1927 the Chief of Police And Mrs.