Gustave Klimt, “Fulfillment” (1905).
This poem has been drawn from Vol. 1, No. 9 of the American Reader. For the full portfolio, purchase the issue, available in Barnes and Nobles and independent booksellers nationwide, as well as in our Shoppe.
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Bring the huge vernacular.
Bring trysts of jealous
gods and a girl changed into a tree
and the tree, bring it
back or forward into
the foreseeable quantum dawn
shielding opalescent fog.
Bring days
by the road over which cats run
into the evening in diagonal cat shapes.
Please also to send
ninety sorrowing words
from which to choose
as I do not
I do not know
where the horizon is
located night or day to furnish
with cantilevered
messages from creatures
yet unnamed in the animate gusts of
of waiting for speech
that is a wonder thing.
To whom does the poem speak?
To whom is it speaking?
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