Poem for the Weekend: Frank Bidart

The poet Frank Bidart's career has spanned almost fifty years. He's the recipient of many accolades and awards, most recently, this year's National Book Award. More about his writing here and here.

 

Visions at 74

 

by Frank Bidart 

 

                                            

The planet turns there without you, beautiful.

Exiled by death you cannot

touch it. Weird joy to watch postulates

lived out and discarded, something crowded

inside us always craving to become something

glistening outside us, the relentless planet

showing itself the logic of what is

buried inside it. To love existence

is to love what is indifferent to you

you think, as you watch it turn there, beautiful.

World that can know itself only by

world, soon it must colonize and infect the stars.

You are an hypothesis made of flesh.

What you will teach the stars is constant

rage at the constant prospect of not-being.                        

                      •

 

Sometimes when I wake it's because I hear

a knock. Knock,

Knock. Two

knocks, quite clear.

I wake and listen. It's nothing.