Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

Silence Wager Stories

Susan Howe (1937– ) Silence Wager Stories When I come to view about steadfastness Espousal is as ever Evil never unravels Memory was and will be yet mercy flows Mercies to me and mine Night rainy my family in private and family I know I know short conviction Have losses then let me see why To what distance and by what path I thought you would come away _________________________ 145 susAn hoWe 1 Battered out of Isaiah Prophets stand gazing Formed from earth In sure and certain What can be thought Who go down to hell alive is the theme of this work I walk its broad shield Every sign by itself havoc brood from afar Letting the slip out Glorious in faithfulness Reason never thought saw 2 You already have brine Reason swept all away Disciples are fishermen Go to them for direction Gospel of law Gospel of shadow in the vale of behavior who is the transgressor Far thought for thought nearer one to the other I know and do not know Non attachment dwell on nothing Peace be in this house Only his name and truth 146 gArnet poems 3 Having a great way to go it struck at my life how you conformed to dust I have taken the library Volumes might be written ambiguous signs by name Near nightfall it touches it Nothing can forbear it So fierce and so flaring Sometimes by the seaside all echoes link as air Not I cannot tell what so wanton and so all about 4 Fields have vanished The Mower his hopes Bow broke time loose none but my shadow she to have lived on with the wood-siege nesting in this poem Departed from the body at home of the story I’m free and I’m famished And so to the Irish Patrol sentinel ensign Please feel my arms open 147 susAn hoWe 5 The issue of legitimation Identity of the subject Circumcision of a heart driven outside its secret Elysian solitary imagination by doubt but not by sight Fear that forever forever perfect Charity casts out The Canticle is an allegory unchangeable but changeable Fluttering robes of Covetous He is incomprehensible he makes darkness his covert 6 Ages pre-supposed ages the darkness of life out of necessity night being a defense by day the cause and way to it From same to the same These joining together and having allegiance Words are an illusion are vibrations of air Fabricating senselessness He has shattered gates Thrown open to himself 148 gArnet poems 7 Though lost I love Love unburied lies No echo newlyfledge Thought but thought the moving cause the execution of it Only for theft’s sake even though even perturb the peace But for the hate of it questionless limit unassuaged newlyfledge A counter-Covenant 8 Mysterious as night itself All negligently scenery if Nothing could be seen Sacraments are mysterious Ambiguous in literal meaning the Pentateuch the Angels John all men form a silent man who wrote the author down Sackcloth itself is humility a word prerogatives array Language a wood for thought over the pantomime of thought Words words night unto night 149 susAn hoWe 9 Drift of human mortality what is the drift of words Pure thoughts are coupled Turn your face to what told me love grazed here at least mutinous predominant unapparent What is unseen is eternal Judgments are a great deep Confession comes to nought half to be taken half left From communion of wrongdoing doubleness among the nouns I feed and feed upon names 10 Claim foreign order dismantling mortal Begotten possibility plummet fetter seem So coldly systems break Fraught atvantaging Two tell againstself Theme theme heart fury all in mutiny Troubleless or sadder Estranged of all strange Let my soul quell Give my soul ease 150 gArnet poems 11 Antic prelate treason I put on haircloth Clear unutterable Secret but tell What diadem bright Theme theme heart fury Winged knowledge hush Billeted near presage such themes do quell Claim foreign order Plummet fetter seem wild as loveDeath Two tell against self 12 Strange fear of sleep am bafflement gone Bat winged dim dawn herthe midmost wide I did this and I But forever you say Bafflement nether elegy herthe otherwise...