LIFEGUARD CLINGING TO A STEEPLE
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/308/1/LIFEGUARD-CLINGING-TO-A-STEEPLE/Page1.html
Bill Knott
Bill Knott is the author of some of the America's finest, most original poetry. It is impossible to discuss post-modern American poetry without focusing on the singular vision of Bill Knott. A true maverick, a master revered by the finest poets of our time, Knott has been virtually ignored by both the American poetry establishment and the "avante garde." Among his many volumes of poetry are: The Quicken Tree, Outremer (Iowa Poetry Prize), Poems 1963-1988, Selected and Collected Poems, Rome in Rome, Love Poems to Myself, Nights of Naomi, Autonecrophilia, Aurealism, and The Naomi Poems. The selection below is from Knott's manuscript, Plaza de Loco.By Bill Knott
Published on 02/23/2005
Why are all the survivors of the needle's eye
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
birth to burial, are not yet here.
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
birth to burial, are not yet here.
Why are all the survivors of the needle's eye
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
birth to burial, are not yet here.
But when did we first start embracing
the wakes of ourselves in each other rather
than each other? As the fruit falls
to hiatus us, its bloom spoiled by last year's cores.
Or the sun whose portrait rots in our pores,
those sweatbeads blurred in closeup but clear afar--
that pointillist pap, that hybrid suicide.
The face carefully tattooed around love's wounds
does not itself look injured.
Copyright © Bill Knott, 2005. All Rights Reserved
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
birth to burial, are not yet here.
But when did we first start embracing
the wakes of ourselves in each other rather
than each other? As the fruit falls
to hiatus us, its bloom spoiled by last year's cores.
Or the sun whose portrait rots in our pores,
those sweatbeads blurred in closeup but clear afar--
that pointillist pap, that hybrid suicide.
The face carefully tattooed around love's wounds
does not itself look injured.
Copyright © Bill Knott, 2005. All Rights Reserved