A Memory of Poppies
Like the darkest note a lute sustains
Or the image of fog
An index of emptiness
Condensed on film
Like a single thread picked from a skein
Not the thread so much as the care the dexterity
Of leaving the whole untangled
Like obdurate moonlight
Like a refrain’s insistence
Like windblown snow in a cranny
Or the moment before a movie starts
The small audience
Taking in a breath all at once
Like the polyvalence of a lie
Or a large field sown with sleepiness
A Note to Ungaretti
Obscured as one might say
Of light-fall
Or a distance haze hides
Each note is held
But at a whisper
As when dancers
Take the stage
And the curtain opens
And it is not yet
The first day of creation
Negative Latitudes
The spirits of the dead keep watch
Dark and open
Their eyes dilate absorb the dark
Lit by the black sun’s prime matter
A chthonic journey
Is not without intention or destination
The habit of a body to endure endures
Mute chronic pain
Without name or consolation
Given a map one carries it unfolds it
Consults it although
At these negative latitudes it proves useless
Eric Pankey is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently AUGURY (Milkweed Editions 2017).