Clear Night by Charles Wright
Clear Night
Charles WrightClear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.
MARGINALIA
1.
Just checking in, writes J., one evening. To see if I’m okay. To see if I’m still alive. Maybe.
2.
Too many people to grieve these days. One of them is myself although I don’t know exactly why I’m on the list. I just am.
3.
I am alive—I guess—. Emily Dickinson in my head, but without the affirmation in the end.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Country Music: Selected Early Poems by Charles Wright, published by Wesleyan University Press, 1991. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Co-winner of the 1983 National Book Award for Poetry, Country Music is comprised of eighty-eight poems selected from Charles Wright’s first four books published between 1970 and 1977. From his first book, The Grave of the Right Hand, to the extraordinary China Trace, this selection of early works represents “Charles Wright’s grand passions: his desire to reclaim and redeem a personal past, to make a reckoning with his present, and to conjure the terms by which we might face the future,” writes David St. John in the forward. These poems, powerful and moving in their own right, lend richness and insight to Wright’s recently collected later works. “In Country Music we see the same explosive imagery, the same dismantled and concentric (or parallel) narratives, the same resolutely spiritual concerns that have become so familiar to us in Wright’s more recent poetry,” writes St. John.” (Source)
ABOUT CHARLES WRIGHT
Charles Wright was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2014. Wright’s early work, includes The Grave of the Right Hand (1970), The Other Side of the River (1984), Chickamauga (1995), Appalachia (1998), A Short History of the Shadow (2002), and Scar Tissue (2006). His many collections of poetry and numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize —have proven that he is “among the best poets” of his generation.
Read more poems by Charles Wright • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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Mary Anne Dreger
Here you go. I do believe the Arrowhead post is an older one. Odd that I couldn’t find any info on T, at least not easily. Well I enjoy her posts even not knowing who she is.
It will be interesting for you when these heavy feelings bubble up to the surface and you can see where they come from. What fear you have that’s blocking you from knowing. And you have the safety of having Rory there to support you. Such a gift.
I’m reading the book The untethered Soul, and he writes about getting to the place where we are the conscious, aware of the conscious watching everything in front of us. Hard to live with that idea in the hour to hour day. But so helpful to take the moment to step back.
Wasn’t that Belgium couple sweet? Our small, lovely world. I shall go out and water a small part of it 😉
Hugs and love to you, MA
Sent from my iPad
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McCarthy Arlene
What a callous and selfish person to make such a horrible invasion of and theft ( because plagiarism is theft) of your thoughts and feelings. I understand and sympathize with your reaction, your need to withdraw- a normal response to being intellectually and emotionally “mugged. “ but I am so glad you’re back. It’s like reuniting with an old friend to read your words again. Thank you.