make a new cult every day to suit your affairs


Christine Gray, Late Lights, 2010

three poems by Jack Gilbert:

More Than Sixty

Out of money, so I'm sitting in the shade
of my farmhouse cleaning the lentils
I found in the back of the cupboard.
Listening to the cicada in the fig tree
mix with the cooing doves on the roof.
I look up when I hear a goat hurt far down
the valley and I discover the sea
exactly the same blue I used to paint it
with my watercolors as a child.
So what, I think happily. So what!


Duende

I can't remember her name.
It's not as though I've been in bed
with that many women.
The truth is I can't even remember
her face. I kind of know how strong
her thighs were, and her beauty.
But what I won't forget
is the way she tore open
the barbecued chicken with her hands,
and wiped the grease on her breasts.


Winning on the Black

The silence is so complete he can hear
the whispers inside him. Mostly names
of women. Women gone or dead. The ones
we loved so easily. What is it, he wonders,
that we had then and don't have now,
that we once were and are no longer.
It seemed so natural to be alive back then.
Soon there will only be the raccoon's
tracks in the snow down by the river.