It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my father’s,… Continue reading Mark Strand
The End Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem likeWhen he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back. When the time has… Continue reading Mark Strand
Of their mirrors, pretending we are the ones who stareFrom the other side, collectedIn the glassy air. —Mark Strand, from “Violent Storm,” New and Selected Poems. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009
Seven Days First Day I sat in a room that was almost dark,looking out to sea. There was a light on the waterthat released a rainbow which landed near the stairs.I was surprised to discover you at the end of it. Second Day I sat in a beach chair surrounded by tall grassso that only… Continue reading Mark Strand
It was afternoon but I was surethere was moonlight trapped under the plates.You were standing outside the window, saying, “Lift them up.”When I lifted them up the sea was dark,the wind was from the west, and you were gone.” — Mark Strand, from “Seven Days,” The Georgia Review Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 1975), pp.… Continue reading Mark Strand
How can I sing when I haven’t the heart, or the hopeThat something of paradise persists in my song,That a touch of those long afternoons of summer Flowing with golden greens under the sky’s unbroken blueWill find a home in yet another imagined place?Will someone be there to play the viola, someone for whom The… Continue reading Mark Strand
I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me.He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokeshis beard, and says, “I’m thinking of Strand, I’m thinkingthat one of these days I’ll be out back, swinging my scytheor holding my hourglass up to the moon, and Strand will appearin a jacket and… Continue reading Mark Strand
To stare at nothing is to learn by heartWhat all of us will be swept into, and baring oneselfTo the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfortOf being strangers, at… Continue reading Mark Strand
Thick mist swirled up from the river. Someone,Who claimed to have known me years before, Approached, saying there were many poetsWandering around who wished to be alive again.They were ready to say the words they had been unable to say— Words whose absence had been the silence of love,Of pain, and even of pleasure.——Mark Strand,… Continue reading Mark Strand
like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of… Continue reading Mark Strand
The Vale of Soul-Making 