Thank you, Helen!
Impressive! A very fine and polished poem indeed. I certainly enjoyed it.
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
on 1/24/03 2:16 AM, Helen Hagemann at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> farmed out
>
> i
>
> old jam tins are sleepers in a rubbish dump
> a scarred hollow of digging, even
>
> before the rust came, the yard had a kind of design:
> trees as old as frost, melon sky at sundown
>
> a coattail earth of flax and ants navigating
> sound before the paddocks came
>
> ii
>
> ordered out on finance plans they cuddled children
> with their debts. he drew fear from flood and seedless
>
> sun. she traded contradiction for curves and valley
> hips, verdant sod of earth, reckless drift of goats.
>
> when the bailiff came, the end of lamb and beef,
> she clung to rock and let the salt erupt from hands
>
> and tongue the way the body bleeds its bitterness.
> he roped a bulky contents under tarp,
>
> sped through every gate, clouding exile
> and the bright disturbance of his wheat
>
> iii
>
> here on this white paper words rim
> the borderline of their passion
>
> it moves in some direction to inhabit lives
> as couplets of unknown pain.
>
> poems cannot see collapsed hearts
> fresh wounds, first rage, so in here
>
> their darkness spills on fingers to form silence
> like a letterbox, where only the clouds go by
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