Home > Work > Collected Poems: 1974-2004
1 " PITHOSClimbinto a jarand livefor a while.Chill earth.No starsin this stonesky.You have ceasedto ache.Your spine isa flower. "
― Rita Dove , Collected Poems: 1974-2004
2 " We wire the sky for comfort; we thread it through our lungs for a perfect fit. We’ve arranged this calm, though it is constantly unraveling. Where does it go then, atmosphere suckered up an invisible flue? How can we know where it goes? "
3 " The sun crouched behind leaves, but the trees had long since walked away. The meaning that surfaces comes to me aslant and I go to meet it, stepping out of my body word for word, until I am everything at once: the perfume of the world in which I go under, a skindiver remembering air "
4 " I prove a theorem and the house expands: the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling, the ceiling floats away with a sigh. As the walls clear themselves of everything but transparency, the scent of carnations leaves with them. I am out in the open and above the windows have hinged into butterflies, sunlight glinting where they’ve intersected. They are going to some point true and unproven "
5 " BELINDA’S PETITION (Boston, February 1782) To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of this Country, new born: I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave. I will not take too much of your Time, but to plead and place my pitiable Life unto the Fathers of this Nation. Lately your Countrymen have severed the Binds of Tyranny. I would hope you would consider the Same for me, pure Air being the sole Advantage of which I can boast in my present Condition. "
6 " THE HOUSE SLAVEThose days I lie on my cot, shivering in the early heat, and as the fields unfold to whiteness, and they spill like bees among the fat flowers, I weep. It is not yet daylight. "
7 " If, at the end of the Atlantic, Columbus had found only an absence of water, this English tourist would have been there to capture that void with a wide-angle lens. Here, the wind blows from nowhere to nowhere across a plain transformed by salt into a vision of light.Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation. You start out with one thing, end up with another, and nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future. "
8 " THE HILL HAS SOMETHING TO SAY but isn’t talking. Instead the valley groans as the wind, amphoric, hoots its one bad note. Halfway up, we stop to peek through smudged pine: this is Europe and its green terraces.What’s left to climb’s inside us,: it’s not all in the books (but maps don’t lie).(For all we know the wind’s inside us, pacingour lungs.) "
9 " EXEUNT THE VIOLSListen: even the ocean mourns the passage of voices so pure and penetrant, that insect hum. Who discovered usefulness? Who forgot how to sing, simply? (Magnificence spoke up briefly, followed by the race boat’s break-neck dazzle.)…their last chord a breath drawn deep in a garden maze, there near the statue smiling under the stars. "
10 " THE BREATHING, THE ENDLESS NEWSeach god is empty without us, penitent, raking our yards into windblown piles. . . . Children know this: they are the trailings of gods. "
11 " TESTIMONIAL Back when the earth was new and heaven just a whisper, back when the names of things hadn’t had time to stick; back when the smallest breezes melted summer into autumn, when all the poplars quivered sweetly in rank and file . . . the world called, and I answered. Each glance ignited to a gaze. I caught my breath and called that life, swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet. I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn’t know their names? "
12 " FOR SOPHIE, WHO’LL BE IN FIRST GRADE IN THE YEAR 2000 No bright toy this world we’ve left you. Even the wrapping is torn, the ribbons grease-flecked and askew. Still, it’s all we have. Wait a moment before you pick it up. Study its scratches, how it shines in places. Now love what you touch, and you will touch wisely. May the world, in your hands, brighten with use. May you sleep in sweet breath and rise always in wonder to mountain and forest, green gaze and silk cheek— "
13 " Hush, now. Assay the terrain: all around us dark and the perimeter in flames, but the stars— tiny, missionary stars— on high, serene, studding the inky brow of heaven. "
14 " LA CHAPELLE. 92ND DIVISION. TED. (September, 1918)This lonely beautiful word means church and it is quiet here; the stone walls curve like slow water.It’s Sunday and I’m standing on the bitter ridge of France, overlooking the war. La Guerre is asleep. This morning early on patrol we slipped down through the mist and scent of burning woodchips (somewhere someone was warm) into Moyenmoutier… a cloister of flushed brick and a little river braiding its dark hair. Back home in Louisiana the earth is red, but it suckles you until you can sing yourself grown. Here, even the wind has edges. Drizzle splintered around us; we stood on the arched bridge and thought for a moment of the dead we had left behind in the valley, in the terrible noise. "
15 " LOOKING UP FROM THE PAGE, I AM REMINDED OF THIS MORTAL COIL Mercurial ribbon licking the cut lip of the Blue Ridge— daybreak or end, I can’t tell as long as I ignore the body’s marching orders, as long as I am alive in air . . . What good is the brain without traveling shoes? "
