Popper's Dilemma

The evening folds the sun in its blue skirt.
Time to think of fire and the marbled face
that makes an old man come to assert
the flesh of his sign, his singular grace.

I heard, in my cradle, the song that flamed
the year's new mountain and heard myself named
by gourds and wooden horns under the tree,
and in that shade I set my spirit free.

In Buenos Aires, José Paz sleeps
under five angels; while one uncovers
A mortal woman's eyes, one discovers
death's form and, standing above the cross, weeps.

This fire blue evening has become my cross
and the capped candle of my every loss.

Jay Wright is the author of Transfigurations: Collected Poems (2000), Boleros (1991), Selected Poems of Jay Wright (1987), Explications/Interpretations (1984), Elaine's Book (1986), The Double Invention of Komo (1980), Dimensions of History (1976), Soothsayers and Omens (1976), and The Homecoming Singer (1971). He is the recipient of an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

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