During
her reading at the Rosenbach, Susan Stewart used hand signals literally to
indicate the presence of virgules & parentheses. Afterwards, she suggested
that she would never do that “in a real reading,” a phrase that caught my
attention. Susan Stewart most recently won the National Books Critic Circle Award for Poetry
for Columbarium. In the fall, she will begin
teaching at
A
constant of gravitation
the G
is liminal / like a
door
(on one side, enclosure)
on the other / eternity
the knock in the night / a fury
awakens the sleepers / unto nothing
yet (silence)
footsteps recede /
like the furious dead
to silent night
unbalanced / a jury
(or the glad all at once
into happy roar)
unbalanced / like a door
on one side receding
(on the other meeting)
like call / and response
without response (like
greeting)
like keening / like
cleaving
Into the heaven of heavens
I presumed an earthly guest
who showed up late (as monster as divine)
Gone from the glass was the ghost of a god
the guest of a chance
/ not yet the host.
