In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances.
“Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements” by Lucie Brock-Broido Issue no. 154 (Spring 2000)
for Harry Ford I was not ready for your form to be cold Ever. Even in life You did not inhabit, necessarily, a form, But a mind of Rarer liquid element. It had not occurred to me You would take Leave and it will be winter from now on, not only Here, in the ordinary, But there too, in the extraordinary elegance Of calcium and finery And loss. Keep me Tethered here, breathtakingly awkward and alive. If you had a psyche it was not known to me. If you had a figure it would be heavy ivory. If you were a man, you would be An autumn of black carriages filled red with leaves From sycamore; trees, Not scattering. I was not ready for such Eanhward and unease. Good-bye to the imperium, the rinsing wind. You, cold As God and the great Glassed castle in which I’ve lived, simply Now a house. A girl ago, a girlhood gone like a vial of ether Thrown on fire—just A little jump of flame, like grief, or, Like a penicillin that has lost its skill at killing Off, it then is gone.
for Harry Ford
I was not ready for your form to be cold Ever. Even in life
You did not inhabit, necessarily, a form, But a mind of
Rarer liquid element. It had not occurred to me You would take
Leave and it will be winter from now on, not only Here, in the ordinary,
But there too, in the extraordinary elegance Of calcium and finery
And loss. Keep me
Tethered here, breathtakingly awkward and alive.
If you had a psyche it was not known to me.
If you had a figure it would be heavy ivory.
If you were a man, you would be
An autumn of black carriages filled red with leaves From sycamore; trees,
Not scattering. I was not ready for such Eanhward and unease.
Good-bye to the imperium, the rinsing wind. You, cold As God and the great
Glassed castle in which I’ve lived, simply Now a house.
A girl ago, a girlhood gone like a vial of ether Thrown on fire—just
A little jump of flame, like grief, or,
Like a penicillin that has lost its skill at killing Off, it then is gone.
Shane McCrae’s most recent books are The Gilded Auction Block and Sometimes I Never Suffered, both of which are published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
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