Four by Fargas

Translated Either As 'Experience' Or 'Suffering'

In the Agamemnon, wisdom comes dripping

like saline on a cancer ward.

Approaching what is merciless in us with mercy,

following pain back like a red thread toward its source.

Some say it's matter of noticing we're already inside.

Pathei mathos. Something teaches us. The moth at the lamp,

the lesson braided in the wick.

  

At Poplar Pond

There are angels right there between those trees.

Don't be frightened, I'm not seeing things.

The spaces we call empty are full of—

not tree, not sky, but us. We station our angels

aloft to mark our place in the holy ordinariness.

So these simples—chalky water, poplar,

moth-flown light—are that blind, sacred flesh.

A Little Champagne Music

Should there be a poetry of men? "Why do you suppose
everyone's writing about God these days?"
Taffy-colored hair and damselflies, amaryllis
vulgar as a flatted horn, clavicles and happenstance.
We should be coupling and uncoupling like the Atchison,
Topeka, and the Santa Fe. Our daily bread
and foxtrot. And a-one and a-two . . .

If There Is A

If there is a God, he has a lot to answer for.
Crocuses, purple cups that bloom through snow.
Cerulean, cornflower, azure, turquoise, ultramarine.
Mist of round haybales along the Sand Road
just after 5 a.m., when the foxes go to ground.
Not only the obvious evils, but also these other things
we should not mistake for easy.

by Laura Fargas

AN ANIMAL OF THE SIXTH DAY