Anywhere Else

     Sometimes I'd cycle out to see 
     how the curve of night came down 
     in some other place: on the outskirts 
     of a postwar town, where the streets 

     and fields were neatly parsed
     and a glaring moon splashed down 
     over the stern lines of industrial parks. 
     Rows of lighted windows hinted at the life 

     I could have had, at all I would 
     have missed. I'd stand and stare,
     seasick from the sink and bob of that land,
     woozy from its bruising air and lie down 

     in a ditch, right there. Unaligned with earth 
     or sky I'd close my eyes, hold tight to the raft
     of grass that would carry me from town 
     to town, from light to the light left after. 


     Jacquelyn Pope
 	

     
     *          *          *


     Sunday's Hours 

     I am numb as the bricks, dumb as the bells
     in-between hours. Reading the wind's script  

     on the alley wall, watching the garden
     grow its shadows, lying still. I'm still 

     as streaming water, still as the straits
     running under our bed, and I swear 

     some cast-off cargo rusts and rattles there,
     thick with the silt of Sunday's hours.

       
     Jacquelyn Pope



     *          *          *


     about the poems:

     "These poems are part of a manuscript that draws on the years I 
     spent living and working in Amsterdam, a city whose light, water, 
     and structures still have great significance for me. I've been 
     very interested in trying to work from certain remembered landscapes, 
     moods, and tones."



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