Three Poems:

Sleep Chains

Who can sleep when she —
hundreds of miles away I feel that vast breath
fan her restless decks.
Cicatrice by cicatrice
all the links
rattle once.
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.
Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.

Sunday

My washed rags flap on a serious grey sunset.
Suppertime, a colder wind.
Leaves huddle a bit.
Kitchen lights come on.
Little spongy mysteries of evening begin to nick open.
Time to call mother.
Let it ring.
Six.
Seven.
Eight — she
lifts the receiver, waits.
Down the hollow distances are they fieldmice that scamper so drily.

Nothing For It

Your glassy wind breaks on a shoutless shore and stirs around the rose.
Lo how
before a great snow,
before the gliding emptiness of the night coming on us,
our lanterns throw
shapes of old companions
and
a cold pause after.
What knife skinned off
that hour.
Sank the buoys.
Blows on what was our house.
Nothing for it just row.

Anne Carson
Decreation
Poetry, Essays, Opera
Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright © 2005 by Anne Carson
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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