I love an expert I hate a hack

Three Poems by Franz Wright

The Street

On it lives one bird

who commences singing, for some reason best known to
itself, at precisely 4 a.m.

Each day I listen for it in the night.

I too have a song to say alone

but can't begin. On it, surrounded by blocks of
black warehouses,

is located this room. I say this room, but no one
knows

how many rooms I have. So many rooms how shall I
light

so many . . . Also yours, though you are never
there.

It's true I've been gone a long time.

But I have come back. I have.

Where are you?

I can change.


Winter Entries

Love no one, work, and don't let the pack know
     you're wounded . . .

Stupid, disappointed strategies.

Hazel wind of dusk, I have lived so much.

Friendless eeriness of the new street —

The poem does not come, but its place is kept set.

Getting Off Work

I'm finished. It's finished
with me.

There is nothing to do now,
at last,

but get from this chair
to the bedroom

before the green pre-light, the leaves'
last night telling's

obliterated by another
morning's thermonuclear

soundless detonation-
nothing

except to be quiet
enough not to wake you.

To be quiet enough
not to wake.