Poem for the Weekend: Charles Wright

 

 



I realized this morning that I haven't featured a male poet for a while (oops!). So here's a good one: Charles Wright, named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2014. Biographical information on this esteemed writer here.

 

Clear Night

 

by Charles Wright

 

Clear 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.