Conjunctions:17 Tenth Anniversary Issue

Three Poems
The following is an excerpt from the three poems by Keith Waldrop that first appeared in Conjunctions:17.

Transparent Like the Air

spirits love
houses and also

certain exemplary places

(such as the rotten
pilings off
India Point)

without necessarily controlling
the intervening spaces

they are nothing

they have not returned

(a primitive
sign meaning “neither … nor”)

they do not
need to return I am
still here I

can bear only
the figures light
delineates not
the light itself

(unstable, un-
determined, in a
state of last ruin where
ontology seeps in)

clear things
with dark
addresses

certain stones give
birth to other stones

(bodies we label
heavy) some

split into thin
flakes tightly
embedded a

liquid

petrified

animals
fallen down shafts the
marrow of their bones

frozen to this
selfsame

stone
(opaque

and then the flash
of a bird’s wing) I

go down the column

Keith Waldrop’s recent poetry books are Transcendental Studies (Univerisity of California Press), winner of the 2009 National Book Award, The Real Subject (Omnidawn), and a trilogy The Locality PrincipleThe Silhouette of the Bridgeand Semiramis If I Remember (Avec Books).