Elizabeth Willis
The Human Abstract
iv. a few stones for Lorine Niedecker
This I is an idyll
I captured the first day
the office between
the leaf and the external
Landlord, I said again
you can't move a river really
yet with no apparent music
my face would pass
*
what bird would light
in a moving tree?
the tree I carry
what is the use
if her beauty goes
wasted on me
I said to my head
I live unburied
I am standing up
*
In your city
I do as your people
This nonsense has left me
unruled by examples
you Echo
you blade of grass
The egg is not by nature
better than the full crow
I am every kind of stone
but one
*
What I know was divided
by the weather of others
There's a kind of electricity
a fire in the first snow
A mine from the perspective of an owner
a mine as labor
*
I left my baby in Forest A.
(deeper, more mountainous)
the continent submerges at a distance
Death wrote a poem and I lost it
smaller than anger
larger than my head
my head filled with snow
"We build this house"
and then we live in it
*
Against this house I always hammering
the green of a fountain
the original honor of the thing
Measured by message
I had a round of distance
till a city found me
A tinny betrayal of origin
(not stealthy not stone)
The eyebright in season
and not the storm between
I'm late and come adrift
Copyright © 1995 Elizabeth Willis
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