Memoirous

Labor Day by James Schuyler From Collected Poems, James Schuyler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. Labor Day Not what I think or see (I can’t: sun in my eyes) or remember, or will be – what do I know of that? – or never knew or know for sure, just this day its clarity: bliss: an un- ending kiss: what a gyp, that there is unendingness but we, or I, only get to sense it. It’s not like that, this day.  A family of seven walk down our street, a tot on his father’s shoulders. Three policemen chat. The fancy grocer’s is open.  Liquor store shut: I foresaw that. Drums in my room: “We can make each other happy.” Radiant clarity, why, today, do I think of death?

Readers of this blog also know that I love (my boy) James Schuyler. He was a master of the Write Right Now. Thus, his National Book Award winner, The Morning of the Poem which is one continuous dream of a morning, of a poem, of life observed. The Award was well-deserved. His work continues to influence writers of today. Today. The world seems scary. There isn’t a lot of solace. So I turn to poetry. Now is the time to immerse ourselves in poetry. To turn away from the world and all it’s turmoil and trauma. I’m not exactly going to put my head in a hole, but rather I want to describe to you another world. One without a ranting and raving orange-haired man. Thank you. The sky eats up the trees The newspaper comes. It has a bellyful of bad news. The sun is not where it was. Nor is the moon. Once so flat, now so round. A man carries papers out of the house. Which makes a small change. I read at night. I take the train and go to the city. Then I come back....

" In January After Ibn Sahl The yard has sopped into its green-grizzled self its new year         whiteness. A dog stirs the noon-blue dark with a running shadow and dirt         smells cold and doggy As though the one thing never seen were its frozen coupling         with the air that brings the flowers of grasses. And a leafless beech stands wrinkled, gray and sexless–all bone         and loosened sinew–in silver glory And the sun falls all on one side of it in a running glance, a         licking gaze, an eye-kiss And ancient silver struck by gold emerges mossy, pinkly         lichened where the sun fondles it And starlings of anthracite march into the east with rapid jerky         steps pecki...