Conjunctions:32 Eye to Eye

Five Poems
The following comprises three of the five poems by Donald Revell published in Conjunctions:32.
 
In the Drisk

In the drisk

I was changed

To a mountaintop



                              Or drowned

                              I had forgotten

                              Drowning



Findrinny

                A whale’s word

Drisk is Indian


So do works of man

Resemble works of nature



Failing to understand wait

Perfectly still mistaking

Sailboats for a mountain don’t be scared


 



Hymn Completed in Tears

Hymn completed in tears

No drunk can dream

I’ve been here before

What a funny candy



                                  Be born

                                  Be born



Someone in the circus

Fell

Into the audience

And it’s happening

Again



            This is an explosion

            An exact white lollipop

            I refuse to stop


 



10 November 1997

Why not people Heaven

With magpies

It’s only the ceremony

After all

Makes us ridiculous



A birthday today telephones into the loose earth

It’s not ridiculous

Only lonely

Out of Heaven



Stories begin where they ought to

End with magpies

Starlings and synonyms



Sister’s birthday means the same

Why not people

Donald Revell is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, most recently of White Campion and The English Boat (both Alice James Books), as well as six volumes of translations from the French, including Apollinaire’s Alcools (Wesleyan), Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, Laforgue’s Last Verses, and Verlaine’s Songs without Words (all Omnidawn). Winner of the PEN USA Translation Award and two-time winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry, he has also won the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize.