Two Poems by Derek Gromadzki
Today in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor Shane McCrae features a poem by Derek Gromadzki. About Gromadzki’s work, McCrae writes: “A few weeks ago, Derek told me he was just about to finish the manuscript of his first book. I’ve been reading Derek’s poems eagerly for years now, and I’ve thought him ready for a book as long. The sound he makes is his own; his poems are unlike any poems that I know of being written today. Each word bears a weight most poets wouldn’t dare—his lyricism arises from the point at which post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E verbal atomization and the stanza-shaping music characteristic of medieval lyrics meet. I can’t get enough of his sound, and I can’t wait for his book.”
Oculus
holes on behalf of cinerary resistance
flicker a caprice of orbs and amber distilled in lanterns
kindled to charcoal sockets that deposit lees onto our
listening and our cries singed by wicks aspire to distended beacons
sooner than fray
reverts to advent and attared wax
ideas of circle top out shallow
slipping away from absolutes
across sextons’ tufts in points like lines
lines like arcs and wend we widen in wonder
below circumspect cross sections of ashlar chutes
wedged up with nothing constricting
lissome whists around corkscrew shadows
to hazard a glance at patched atmosphere
as radiance stains through a glass lightly
with all the fragile mimicry of life in pictures
how saints have bent slender here under orisons and absence
over which appearance tips and we the steadying
motley processions to promises trippingly
pronounced concerning spaces
or the escape from spaces into learned verse
for the learned and ruth for those who fumble through depiction
spilled onto panes too eagerly
grist for the diversions of crystal
abate affect with a makeshift kilter
and into grooves
defile from lunettes trussed too briefly
to specter contingent too briefly
held for ideals only becoming by unlimited chance
we concede our exhalations to iron arms
that trail from chiseled figures
and figures that affix a quivering leer
to oratory ungently divined by alchemical keys
enigmas and tinctures of mercury
asperge our antiphons
released toward ellipses
Pomander
jagged duration and indecisions in a threshold gasp
as the pepper of incense approaches
oblique contortions in no positive hue to breach
trance and transience suborned
by the merit of these many relics
when oil and oil’s scents were story enough
a viscous quickening
among disused sentences and intonations from solitude
where things maintain the limits of actions
and we of what composure if not of lumen
brushed from columbine that ends on altars
in keener demarcations than forms of farewell
strange natures that made us parts of ourselves
retire disquiet twist a silhouette
to the screws of doxy
and swill deep drafts of fog intermingling with afterimage
stranded on miscast regard an inevitable error
against a feverish wish and a want like porcelain
here before hearing ceased or almost and humming
visions set a rival up to
rites declined from immanence and inclination
spin rippled looks that comb
over surfaces at angles tangent to our own
and hang on silent to the censer’s inscription
in open aisles swung depended from undeterred
ties at the invention of vapor
with word and gesture gesture and faint predictions
that we bend to furnish swerves
escape into chime and hesitate
among finials stalled in final bloom
as the rushlights dwindle and commit to fetters
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