“Poet”
Are you he
Who’d silence his high vanity
If to despise
The telling of his only eyes
Ere make
Mankind his proud mistake?
I am he
Whose lies
Sing the truths they disguise.
*
“Lighting another cigarette”
Lighting another cigarette,
Passing the window, I see the axe,
Blade buried in a log in the woodpile,
The handle up to lay hold—
How long
Have I been counting whispers
Of trees of grasses of the wintry sea?
*
“Again, in again most now”
Again, in again most now
And even only now
As once, as only: weather
Brooding, lifting blazier things.
Spring. Therefore in now again
Upfall of every unconcluded, open
Known: tamed cat
A-crouch now, savage. Good, good
Necessary, O you are, you gentled
Evil: evil as this
That keeps these windows to
These slept-to things
Intact, yes good
In this again need tear
Again need put sleep down
Now, yes, again love need.
_______________________________________
Corrupted into Song: The Complete Poems of Alvin Feinman by Alvin Feinman is available via Princeton University Press.
Alvin Feinman
Alvin Feinman (1929-2008) taught literature at Bennington College from 1969 to 1994. He was the author of Preambles and Other Poems and an expanded edition of that work, Poems (Princeton). He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at Brooklyn College, the University of Chicago, and Yale University.
