Sunday, March 28, 2010

Readings: One More Poem

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Here is another poem from the same Kay Ryan collection as is the one below. I find it to be, sadly enough, an apt gloss on my previous post:


CORNERS

All but saints
and hermits
mean to paint
themselves
toward an exit

leaving a
pleasant ocean
of azure or jonquil
ending neatly
at the doorsill.

But sometimes
something happens:

a minor dislocation
by which the doors
and windows
undergo a
small rotation
to the left a little

--but repeatedly.
It isn’t
obvious immediately.

Only toward evening
and from the
farthest corners
of the houses
of the painters

comes a chorus
of individual keening
as of kenneled dogs
someone is mistreating.
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