P o e m s   b y   S t a n   M i r

This poem was taken from the online literary journal FREEVERSE, issue 7, winter 2004. Stan Mir lives in Rhode Island. His poems and reviews have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Fence, Meanjin, Rain Taxi, and Word for/Word.

Copyright © 2005 by Stan Mir, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

When you say you are afraid there is something else there, some figure
           by the window, or someone 
                       coming nearer, a voice in another 
                                   room that isn't 
                       quite a voice, somehow the difference 
between things and persons and the difference between persons and things, 
                                      so given and irreducible, 
becomes like the clouding of 
the past
            and the present at 
                        the moment when you want to turn 
             toward the future 
and find yourself leaden 
            with hesitation. 

               I do not know where the dead are, or if they are. It is as easy 
               to say they are with us as to say they are irrevocably gone. 
The film you saw, where the boy lives in the midst
           of an after-life, 
                and thinks it is this world, and cannot see 
                all the forces that have gathered 
                against him, is now in your memory and the memory of others - 
                                          and nowhere else. 

He was a boy who never lived, but you are alive 
and your desire to live can overwhelm 
                    whatever compels you to forget. 
                           You can risk some harm, run up close 
                           to the brink, 
                           and still you won't know what it is you want to know.

We cannot look at the sun, and so we look at pictures.
I have seen the soul go out, 
                                            like a breath, 
and fill the room 
                 before it leaves. 
                            And that was the end of it; there was no second end. 

You ask if they have some intent toward us. 
                    Do they think of us as we think of them? Is it fury 
                                that drives them, 
                                            or conscience, or regret? 
        I cannot give you a good explanation, I cannot explain 
                                    what good is; 
my hope is you will feel it 
as a kind of ease. 

I've known those who are busy with love, very busy, 
and ever vigilant, 
those who never take their eyes away, never fall 
           aslant. 
And they, too, are alive, 
                      but they have devoted themselves to fear. 
                      And their fear,
                                 a second end, is like 
                                             a form of death. 

You understand these are questions you are asking of yourself.
There is no outside 
            setting them against you. 
Your mind made these thoughts 
                    and your mind 
will hold you from them.

This poem was taken from the online literary journal FREEVERSE-issue 3, winter 2002. Susan Stewart teaches poetry and aesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania. This poem is from her forthcoming book,Columbarium, to appear with the University of Chicago Press in Autumn 2003. She is also the author of three other books of poems and numerous works of literary and art criticism, including the recent Poetry and the Fate of the Senses.

Copyright © 2003-2005 Susan Stewart all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.