These poems selected from "The Despairs" (book one of a trilogy) copyright 2001 by Cid Corman, published by Cedar Hill Publications with artwork by Alan Chong Lau and distributed from Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers ~

Out in the mountains

the snow is all piled up now

the night coming on

my heart my spirit even

seems to have gone from me quite.

=

FOR

JANG JOE

Like trying to

imagine a

butterfly

trying to

imagine being

a butterfly.

=

Is that Dante or

Macbeth to whose tune

the woods paraded?

Once you're in it you're

in it for all there

may be in it for

you. It gets to you.

THE

TWITCH

A moment

Holub says

is mostly

about three

seconds. Tell

that to a

lover - tell

that to Joan

at the stake.

=

REVELATION

Beginning

at the end

as we must

these words to

introduce

the silence

we're slowly

getting at

but only

now get to

savor the

meaning of.

Once more to

have to face

Genesis.

=

THE

HOMELESS

Sometimes I think we

live in houses in

order to have a

place we can go in

to to come out of

this feeling of a

large entity

we are part of

and yet apart from.

=

ALL

All we have to do

and all we ever learn to

is to lose ourselves.

=

Every day a

little tireder -

harder to get up

and face it again -

as if the breath had

nothing more to say

and more than ever.

PERENNIAL

No matter

what season

if you look

in order

to see you'll

see some leaves

on the ground.

=

Only man could explain God.

=

PROOF

Not merely impertinent -

hopelessly important - but

wholly inadmissable

finding significance

in any or all of this -

as if life were evidence.

=

PLUMB

That cry deepest is

in echoing the echo

of nothing sounded.

Copyright 2001 by Bob & Susan Arnold

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