At the poets’ panel,
after an hour of poets
debating Ezra Pound,
Abe the Lincoln veteran,
remembering
the Spanish Civil War,
raised his hand and said:
If I knew
that a fascist
was a great poet,
I’d shoot him
anyway.

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.