A Slim Volume Taken into the Provinces
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- A Slim Volume Taken into the Provinces*
I have to leave early in the darkand hungry to avoidcrossing the snow as the noon
burns the crustinto an un-servable lakeslush instead of the crisp bridge
that would be in orderto get me over the ridge
My journal is already laundered cleanof my words and my instructionshave dissolved
into a white mash a washed boneball rolled into itselfof all I have in the world in my pocket
The ink is thin the paper is poormy eyes balance on the palewords around which a stream
flows almost erasingthe way acrossthe idea
Shadows the black flowersof the light self-sowing through the trees [End Page 649]
dark gardens of midnightfor the gray-white morninghour of blindness
in print miles before I amto arrive here
To approach the waiting milestonedims whatever else of its lantern"til only the placed light there is on me.
In this light barely but used to itI can make out the staggered columns of my accountas if back through weren't the real distance:
the thin chest flag pinned on by each ridgethe titled introduction taking your coat each storm.
My letters and ribbons have been the natural—strengths on their way to the more—natural weaknesses— and loss. yet—
I wonder where I thought I was going—to 've done what you must passexaminations for before I took any. [End Page 650]
Ed Roberson is Distinguished Artist in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is author of eight books of poetry: The New Wing of the Labyrinth (Singing Horse Press, 2009), City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006), Atmosphere Conditions (Sun & Moon Press, 2000; winner of the 2000 National Poetry Award), Just In / Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1998), Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize), Lucid Interval as Integral Music (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Etai-Eken (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), and When Thy King Is a Boy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970). In 2008, he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Footnotes
* "A Slim Volume Taken into the Provinces" will be published in Ed Roberson's forthcoming volume of poetry, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2010). Printed with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
