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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 939



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from Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring 1991)

Letters From The North Star

Kevin Young


. . . the lights here ask
nothing, the white falling
around my letters silent,
unstoppable. I am writing you
from the empty stomach of sleep
where nothing but the cold
wanders where you're headed;
nobody here peels heads sour
and cheap as lemon, and only
the car sings AM the whole
night through. In the city,
I have seen children half-
bitten by wind. Even trains
arrive without a soul
to greet them; things do
not need me here, this world
dances on its own. Only bridges
beg for me to make them
famous, to learn what I had
ahnost forgotten of flying,
of soaring free, south,
down. So long. Xs, Os.



Kevin Young is Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of To Repel Ghosts (2001) and Most Way Home (1995), selected by Lucille Clifton as part of the National Poetry Series and winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares.

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