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Writing life
morning is the best poem
afternoon papers it over
all settled things must break in pieces
I believe in my sleep
waked in the night by snoring
I laugh to recollect it
Poems on the topic: writing
Poems on the topic “writing” on Poets.by.
Ministry of Truth
a fire looking
in all the books
re-writing the endings to make
an end of writing
how to order myself
for the year to come
Pretty
pretty is a lie
I love to translate
a ready key to forms
in one word
the best of all plaudits
at writing off
Writing process
I set out in the morning
on a journey without any words
to a half acre of land where
I always have been.
Scrivener
A clerk’s place:
I raise an ox of paper
off my writing.
Maypole
People
have
set up
maypoles;
I resolve
to hide.
I count
myself
a perfect
stone of
heaven,
a park
without
a gate,
a pistol
for pins.
Stunt Double
A strange thing, how every day
I am private eye for a statue,
set up in exchange after I fell
to writing, to morrow, to bed.
Somnambulist
Lock me to sleep,
discharge me numb,
set me in writing—
and so to be.
No ideas but in things
Up early
to the morning well.
I hate an abstract tract
made at night.
Retreat
I took to a high
place and stayed
till I was forced by
a hole in my coat
to come home.
I almost wrote.
Self-censor
these days i wear wonder
like a broad-brimmed hat
when the moon is dead empty
i try to lose my shadow
i cut what i thought were tethers
they turn out to be roots
when i stop writing on paper
the trees become less hostile
i could swallow what’s left of my fire
and tend bees
i would write myself out of history
line by painstaking line
Classifieds One
Journal for sale;
belonged to our grandfather.
He bought it after the war,
sat in front of it
every day with a pen,
and never wrote a word.
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