three poems

 

after the peace at wedmore

 

_____________________

as we have come to expect shawn the dancer
exchanging grace for grace,
reconfiguring old habit as grace,
predicting: the grace of a merlin bird upon us,even
when all of what’s visible could be held in the hollow
of a trinket box, the hollow of a saddle shoe.
_____________________

blessed, he pronounces, are those men who keep
their hogs thin.

because it is one way of reenacting
the moment at which no one was eager
to go on with the slaughter. and so we consider it
as we might consider the privilege of watching
a video history of swallowed cures,
as we might consider chaining the gate
before deciding, no, there is no need that I should chain the gate.

 

 

the principal battleground in the french and indian war

 

_____________________

how kindly it is to imagine
the lunar eclipse hushing for a moment
the plains of abraham.
as if all one requires to set a body calm
is a hand to thatch, a hand to draw shut the bridge.
_____________________

but just the same, we need imagine a passing
of the formless quiet.
the spinnaker takes back its onward shape; the whale-
bone finds itself once more at an angle of ill will.

& in the same way that the nearness of a carnival hour
cuts short the penitent mouth,
there is something of acquittal in the voice
which asks: by how many other names
might we know the sensation of the foot’s flesh broken by teeth?

 

 

paris at the outbreak of the revolution

 

_____________________

no longer audible from the jardin des tuileries
hurrah! the advent of the razor!
now, it is a season of latches, high time for getting
gone. because remember, it is always a tailor
to whom a revolution first lays claim. and so
to remain would be to surrender
the luxury of commissioning fresh bedclothes, to rejoice instead
in the new economy of waistcoats, of musket rags, of canvas flaps.
_____________________

but let you be the only one
who could mistake a turnkey for a turnstile, a turnstile for a deermouse—
which means that it is more a season of the just
risen plume, the newly vertical frame.
and the question: to breathe each night
vapor on the dying man’s chest? and the affirmative.

 

 

Thomas Kane was raised in Nashville, Tennessee and now lives in the shadows of the children's hospital.