James Richardson, “By the Numbers”

Last bells of evening, toning bronze
and bronze, a hint of plaint.
Even if I hadn’t heard the shuttering board,
the splash, the laughter, I’d have known
from the quaver of voices over water
that this is the last house in summer,
and now is the double loeliness
of missing a party you don’t even want to be at.

The T’ang poet sets out on a thousand-mile journey,
minor administrative post in prospect,
chronic war rattling around the mountains
that might last all his life. And someone else
returns from a journey no one knows he’s been on,
feeling again the thick air of the valley—
the children so tall—and whatever happens to love
that hasn’t been used enough, has happened.
He spreads before them, as excuse or evidence,
what he has gathered, mottoes of gods and sages,
spells, strange weathers and archaic praises,
currency unfamiliar in this land.

Jame’s Richardson’s By the Numbers was one of the shortlisted titles for this year’s National Book Award for poetry. It also includes “End of Summer,” “In Shakespeare,” and “Subject, Verb, Object” (The New Yorker), plus three poems originally published in Narrative (free subscription required): “Echo,” “Bit Parts,” and “Are We Alone? or Physics You Can Do at Home.”

19 November 2010 | poetry |