These are new poems from my forthcoming book. They've previously been published
in Poetry, Partisan Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Ontario Review, and Pivot.
WHAT HAPPENED
What happened to Mozart who sang like a bird
More golden than Yeats’ imagination wrought,
Where is Shakespeare’s passionate thought,
Does his ghost pace on Hamlet’s stage?
And what of Dante who consigned to Hell
His former friends who did not treat him well?
Where is Sophocles whose simple myth
Became the basis of psychoanalysis.
And Freud who smoked his mouth to death,
What happened to him, to his depth
Of soul – is it lying like a clay shard
In an earthen hole, and poor Dylan Thomas
Who ranted “Death shall have no dominion,”
Knowing he lied, or the Brothers Grimm,
What became of them, dust in sunlight
Turned like a clock – watch it long enough
And you’ll go mad, or Paganini
Whose fingers danced and women swooned,
Or Gower, or Chaucer who made
Such exquisite mixes of English and French
The birds that slepen al with open eye
Would weep to hear the Earth took him?
What happened to Donne who would have us listen
To sermons...
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