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PARTISAN REVIEW
earth like 0 as in Ovum. "Alphabets." [Reads poem.] Now, a sonnet, one
that Czeslaw included in his
Book of Luminolls ThinJ!.s:
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Glearrilng in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the rest of our whole lives.
In conclusion, I will read a poem set on the banks of one of my own
rivers and it's also about two names for one thing. The perch, I'm afraid, in our
country was called "the grunt," but even so the poem is called "The Perch"
and I would like to dedicate it to Czeslaw for all of his great river reveries.
Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Barrn R.iver
Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver,
Perch we called "grunts," little flood-slubs, runry and ready,
I saw and I see in the river's glorified body
That is passable through, but they're bluntly holding the pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze,
Agape on the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
Robert Faggen:
Thank you both. Good night Czeslaw, and all of you.
