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Poetry

From Here Laughter Sounds Like Crying

When time becomes
we become

when day becomes

we begin to break

Take it, all of it,
in consecutive units

What of the plough
the mental field

the bedrock pediment

in time and in

the ancient street

so feeling of Lincoln

I’m nobody
for a change

I take the form

of everyone waiting

No day no bird
taking off

The wood pigeon is no bird
a sound pouring

into itself

We call this
broken and boarded

It is not a dream
not gated

Inside the groundlessness
comes to rest

a largess of ought

Melville has bled
into the local runoff

So much
so much more translation

in the yard

as if insisting

against falling

I want my house
to burn

and build from

nowhere

just there

Let us be
appendages to evolution

mysteries

in the face of violence

even with the shades

Contributor

Peter Gizzi

PETER GIZZI’s books include Some Values of Landscape and Weather, Artificial Heart, and Periplum and Other Poems 1987-1992. A new chapbook, A Panic that Can Still Come Upon Me, is forthcoming this spring from Ugly Duckling Presse.

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The Brooklyn Rail

APR 2006

All Issues