In the desert . . .
- In the desert . . .
In the desert near Quemado, New Mexico,Town in Spanish whose name means "burnt," four hundredStainless steel, polished rods, a grid, one mile by one kilometer,
A sculpture that in the seventies, with boysfrom the local high school, Walter de Maria installed. An invisible plane is made to float on top.
I do not want this to sound like a memory.My mother is watching the faces of the soldiersFlashing in silence at the end of the News Hour.
I do not know where my mother is, so I ask.Of their faces, she says, "I think you really need to look."
What is there for thinking is for being, suggests Parmenides.There is no path the mind might make to change what is.
I know this, I knowThe poles in the field are not planted in memoriam,
Field where the eye might focus on a single pointAnd erase the world behind it. [End Page 169]
Sally Keith is the author of The Fact of the Matter (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and two previous collections of poetry, Design (Center for Literary Publishing, 2000) and Dwelling Song (University of Georgia Press, 2004). She is a member of the M.F.A. Faculty at George Mason University and lives in Washington, D.C.
