My father kissed me once when he was damaged,
……………………………………hours numbered, lips cold,
…………..eyes here and there.
………………………………………………..I did not know who
…………..I was just then, what he heard.
……………………………………When he left,
…………..we placed his name beneath a tree,
……………………….and in the fall, the tree goes nameless.
…………..Sky leans down through the branches
……………………………………where shadows net the ground.
…………..He told me once he did not dream.
…………..No tremor surfaced in the pool.
………………………………………………..If he smelled the stench
…………..of collateral and the guns on ship
…………..that took his youth,
………………………………………………..I never knew.
……………………….Then he fell and broke his English.
…………..He slept.
…………..If the ocean came ashore,
………………………………………………..we were none the wiser,
…………..if he dreamt awake as the sleepless do.
…………..He had so many faces,
……………………………………so many candles in the pond,
…………..and one by one, they sighed a thread
…………..of smoke.
…………..Every year winter clarifies the bones of the garden.
…………..I see farthest through the emptiness.
…………..All my effigies, clouds
……………………………………that whisper, who’s lost now.
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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Author: Bruce Bond
Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-four books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (U. of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019). Among his forthcoming books are Therapon (inspired by Emmanuel Levinas and co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo) and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
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