Charles Wright

Larry has been doing a series of poetry broadsides–letterpress copies of poems, suitable for framing.  He has selected poets of roughly his age group, and this one is on his upcoming list.

The Silent Generation

Afternoons in the backyard, our lives like photographs

Yellowing elsewhere,

xxxxxxxxxxxxx In somebody else’s album,

In secret, January south winds

Ungathering easily through the black limbs of the fruit trees.

 

What was it we never had to say?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Who can remember now—

Something about the world’s wrongs,

Something about the way we shuddered them off like rain

In an open field,

xxxxxxxxxxxConvinced that lightning would not strike.

 

We’re arm in arm with regret, now the left foot, now the right foot.

We give the devil his due.

We walk up and down in the earth

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx We take our flesh in our teeth.

When we die, we die. The wind blows away our footprints.

Charles Wright