10.30.2023

GRIEF-CIRCLES

MORNING OCCURRENCE AT XANADU

Charles Wright

Swallows are flying grief-circles over their featherless young,
Night-dropped and dead on the wooden steps.
The aspen leaves have turned grey,
                                                   slapped by the hard, west wind.

Someone who knows how little he knows
Is like the man who comes to a clearing in the forest,
                                                                    and sees the light spikes,
And suddenly senses how happy his life has been.

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NOTE: “Morning Occurrence at Xanadu,” originally published in Charles Wright’s chapbook The Wrong End of the Rainbow (Sarabande Books, 2005), was reprinted in his Scar Tissue (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006).

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