ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by Ernest Hilbert

Coronation of Sesostris

Shrine of lunar hulls
Swayed to mist in river's hold
Or solar reservoir dried
To yolk and pollen,

Stroking closed temples
Now fastened in flow,
As one ensnared and grappling
To retain so much impermanence --

As one entombed
With swans
And novas, untranslated
And pinned by conflagrations,

Aimless barge tangled in reeds
Bellying fragrant remains,
Figure aflame uncreated
In summoning sunblotch,

A father enthroned and dying,
Hailing stars on doomed concourse,
As startles and drives
A vesselled glare long consumed,

Misspent, annihilated in
This fish-like enclosure,
Processional distance,
A journey beneath celebration,

Circuit or restoration
Of surge unlike departure,
Emperor's jubilee and
Manhattan in January stillborn,

Some gesture of regret
Wounded annulus of early sun
Ringed processional through
Cloud to these scribbled lamentations,

Infant and cold of white,
Earth once wept away
Until there will be
No light --

There are sinkings
In the construction of the barge;
There are earths
Dragged broken from sun;

And what filled the sun with
So many oarsmen or flowers?
There are kingdoms already
In morning scorching

Human skin, bleached and
Wounded with landscape and sky,
Sustained and dilapidated
By the same beauty,

This sewer and cesspit,
River and rotting vein --
This blood is sun-loss
And this blood our ship,

Last stain of enlightenment,
Cast not underneath
But made terrible
In mirroring us.

Ecstasy of St. Teresa

I listened to Bach for eight hours
After she left into snow,

Disappointed with my library
And choice of whiskey --

She divested my apartment
Of her hair, denuded it of form,

Her voice and beauty --
Sauntered into late skies

Past breweries that light
The city's edge with steam,

Leaving me with bottles and my
Old skylight

And the landlord banging on my wall
"You keep quiet now. You always

"Make too much noise in there when
Girls come and leave."

The Triumph of Death

Something emerged against the horizon
Then drew away again. She lifted The Metamorphoses
And read. Nothing changed. She reclined
In the sunshine: those were the best days of my life --

Standing on a corner waiting for him
To get off work and drive me home.
I always had too many windows open.
Someone took her place immediately and held out a camera --

He said I don't know how the sky called us and I don't
Know how the river conducted itself open
I only know that no one could have called in your place
Your knowledge of rivers, your first, unguarded discovering.