[New-Poetry] Tribute reading for Jack Gilbert

[jforjames at aol.com]

Crusoe on the Mountain Gathering Faggots



He gets dead sage and stalks of weeds mostly.
Oleander can kill a fire, they say.
The length of valley below is green
where the grapes are. The small farms
of wheat tiny. And two separate cows.
Then the sea. Here’s a terraced mountain
abandoned to bracken and furze and not
even that. If there was water once, 
there isn’t now. Rock and hammering sun.
He tastes all of it again and again,
his madeleine. He followed that clue
so long it grew faint. Which must account
for his happiness in this wrong terrain.



—Jack Gilbert, The Dance Most of All (Knopf, 2009)


 




 

 

 

Sarah Robinson

Publicist

Alfred A. Knopf

1745 Broadway, 21st floor

New York, NY 10019

Ph: 212-572-2018

Fax: 212-940-7307

srobinson at randomhouse.com

 

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