Mark Irwin
The Wash
She was hanging sheets on the line,
and the morning wore everywhere a music
of wind and new leaves. —Sheets that would become
snow, then again a blaze
of white petals. A radio played and a baby cried
from a window. How many
dinners and plates
through the seasons? She’s
hanging white sheets on the line, their
cloth billowing, fraying
till only threads search the air
in the April days ascending. Now I want
the words to become rocks, then clouds. I want
your eyes to be loaded down,
then to feather and reach
toward those who were unbuttoned.
Conversation with Yehuda Amichai
“Who is your favorite poet?” I asked. “Paul
Celan,” he said.
“I see a distant relationship of witness
between your poetry and his,” I said.
“We are completely different,” he said.
“Celan’s poetry is fast and from the future,”
I said, “while yours is wonderfully slow
and filled with the past, but both are vertical.”
“We are completely different,” he said.
“Your poetry is made of stone,” I said,
“and Celan’s is made of fire.”
He smiled and said nothing. “I love
that some of your poems have no
adjectives,” I said.
“Truth and stone have no adjectives,”
he said.
“It must be amazing to live in a city like Jerusalem
near the Red Sea, the River Jordan, Bethlehem
and the Wailing Wall,” I said. “Once I held
a man behind a Coke machine while he
was dying,” he said. “Did you have any close
friends in the last wars?” I asked. “Dickey,”
he said. “He went to visit his girl behind
enemy lines. He fell near Houlayqat.”
“Vertical and like stone,” I said. “Before he
left, we ate birthday cake,” he said. “We ate
birthday cake with our bloody hands,” he said.
Call
The animals are leaving us now
as we call them, they are leaving as we
feed and pet them they are leaving, turning
toward the wilderness how
will we follow
without trees to guide? Go
on whistle for them, whistle and whistle
until your entire language falls into the long
silver thread of one whistle they
are listening as you close
the gate of your eyes and lock
your teeth over that whistle’s rivery
sound each will pull like a needle
from its paw.