Jorie Graham Poems

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Le Manteau De Pascal

 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Mind

 The slow overture of rain, 
each drop breaking 
without breaking into 
the next, describes 
the unrelenting, syncopated 
mind. Not unlike 
the hummingbirds 
imagining their wings 
to be their heart, and swallows 
believing the horizon 
to be a line they lift 
and drop. What is it 
they cast for? The poplars, 
advancing or retreating, 
lose their stature 
equally, and yet...Read more of this...

Of The Ever-Changing Agitation In The Air

 The man held his hands to his heart as
 he danced.
He slacked and swirled.
The doorways of the little city
blurred. Something
leaked out,
kindling the doorframes up,
making each entranceway
less true.
And darkness gathered
although it does not fall . . . And the little dance,
swinging this human all down the alleyway,
nervous little theme pushing itself along,
braiding, rehearsing,
constantly incomplete so turning and tacking -- 
oh...Read more of this...

Prayer

 Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
 infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there...Read more of this...

Salmon

 I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the...Read more of this...

San Sepolcro

 In this blue light
 I can take you there,
snow having made me
 a world of bone
seen through to. This
 is my house,

my section of Etruscan
 wall, my neighbor's
lemontrees, and, just below
 the lower church,
the airplane factory.
 A rooster

crows all day from mist
 outside the walls.
There's milk on the air,
 ice on the oily
lemonskins. How clean
 the mind is,

holy grave....Read more of this...

The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia

 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear 
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...

The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life

 All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
built-up its tiniest cathedral...
(Or is it the sum of what takes place? )
If I lean down, to whisper, to them,
down into their gravitational field, there where they head busily on
into the woods,...Read more of this...

The Surface

 It has a hole in it. Not only where I

 concentrate.

The river still ribboning, twisting up, 

 into its re-

arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted

 quickenings

and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving

 the messengers--

the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.

 glassy

forgettings under the river of

my attention--

and the river of my attention laying itself down--

 bending,

reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy

 obstacles--

and the surface...Read more of this...

The Way Things Work

 is by admitting 
or opening away. 
This is the simplest form 
of current: Blue 
moving through blue; 
blue through purple; 
the objects of desire 
opening upon themselves 
without us; the objects of faith. 
The way things work 
is by solution, 
resistance lessened or 
increased and taken 
advantage of. 
The way things work 
is that we finally believe 
they are...Read more of this...

To A Friend Going Blind

 Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for guns. Bruna is teaching me
to cut a pattern.
Saturdays we buy the cloth.
She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain,...Read more of this...

Underneath (9)

  Spring
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see
in.

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand...Read more of this...