Summer oaks warring on the hills A doe partaking of a resurrecting tulip Breakfast stray as my watery mind
How late the cloud of my body born here A year spent looking for the way love claimed you The moon lording from the overhang & into open fire
In days past nymphs came with their songs The house embalmed in secrets Sagging shadows chilled in starlight My life taken by the same weapon Each night before me corralling my limbs How often did I meet your eyes slit & thin?
Scouring these hills Fresno hangs blue as ever Full of your roaming corpse Luang Prabang heavy in silver (heart made of rain) Mother amid dill & mustard flowers Early winter in the garden we each learned to lose
What a sight to cherish in my brain!
The doe as fleeting carrion My hunger to protect these lungs
I can’t stay for long so I’ll do this slowly
The sun a sweet ember sleeved in the grove that shades you My arm a bridge between one & me A pledge so small I drop far & into the heat
I wrote this grief poem for my late brother in the early years of his death. He died from cancer in 2014. I was living in Ohio when he passed away in California, where my family is located. Since his passing, and the following deaths of others in my family, I have been grieving in isolation, searching for a way to live with the wideness of loss.
"It is this publicly engaged Elizabeth that Fiona Sampson sets before us in this fine biography, the first since Margaret Forster’s more than 30 years ago. For her frame and point of reference Sampson uses Aurora Leigh, the verse novel that Barrett Browning wrote in 1856, which tells the story of a young female writer’s career, specifically an artist’s development."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Every translation is a collaboration among many, including all those who have come to this terrain before you. I am indebted even to those translations whose approach I reject because they gave me the benefit of having something to reject.
If nothing is to be lost, something must first be gained."
