For Anthony Hecht 1923-2004
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- For Anthony Hecht 1923-2004
All style and substance, elegant and grave, Versed in the courts of wit, and the stark places Sought by the wounded mind, The heart's chambers of love, and atrocity's cave, You put us younger poets through our paces With terms both strict and kind, And, teaching by example, showed us how, In terpsichorean stanzas learned by heart And smooth as alabaster, To make the ancient forms sing here and now With sprezzatura's poise, concealing art That earned the title master. Can one so measured when he took the floor With death itself, and danced that sarabande With breathtaking aplomb At tempi fitted to the chilling score, Really have stopped? The quartet halts, unmanned. The instruments are dumb. The losses come in waves. They seem too much. The birds desert their perches, the whole flock. Art, being art, will last, But it's hard to believe she can proceed with such (An old man failing, nodding off to Bach) Diminishment of cast.
Joseph Harrison's next book of poetry, Identity Theft, is forthcoming from Waywiser Press. His Someone Else's Name (2004) was named as one of the five poetry books of the year by the Washington Post.
