At the Mountain of Death
- At the Mountain of Death
After Paul Celan
Arnica, eye-radiant, a drink from the fountain with the star-emblazoned die bursting on top,
in the place of refuge:
the line written in the book, that book— whose name did it take down before mine?— about a hope, today’s, for a thinker’s word awakening in the heart:
forest tuft, un-sickled, orchid and orchid, singly,
the chaff, afterward, evident as we drive,
and the man who drives us, who also listens to it coming:
the half-trodden [End Page 36] byroads beaten through uplands,
the swampy air, stifling. [End Page 37]
Daniel Tobin is the author of six books of poems, Where the World is Made, Double Life, The Narrows, Second Things, Belated Heavens (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry) and The Net (forthcoming, 2014) along with the critical studies Awake in America and Passage to the Center. He is the editor of The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. He is currently Interim Dean of the School of the Arts at Emerson College.
