12 or 20 (second series) questions with Marc Vincenz

Marc Vincenz [image credit: Jake Quatt] is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, musician, and artist. He has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and translation. His recent poetry collections include The Pearl Diver of Irunmani, A Splash of Cave Paint, The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars, Spells for the Wicked, All the Tricks of Language, and, just out, IRØNCLAD.  An album of post-classical music and spoken word, No More Animal Songs, is also forthcoming. His translation of award-winning Swiss poet and novelist Klaus Merz’ selected poems, An Audible Blue, won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Prize for Translated Literature. His most recent translation is In the House, Still Light, also by Klaus Merz. Marc’s own work has also been translated into many languages. His work has appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares, Raritan, Colorado Review, Evergreen Review, Washington Square Review, interim, Plume, Fourteen Hills, Willow Springs, Solstice, World Literature Today, The Notre Dame Review, The Golden Handcuffs Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books and many other journals, periodicals, and anthologies. Marc is publisher and editor of MadHat Press, and with Paul Hoover, co-publisher of the essential New American Writing. Vincenz lives on a farm in Western Massachusetts where there are more spiny-nosed voles, tufted grey-buckle hares and Amoeba scintilla than bipedal hominids.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My very first published book was an illustrated chapbook entitled Benny and the Scottish Blues. Only around 100 copies were printed, and they ended up with friends and family. The book was a mostly biographical, narrative poetry based on a trip through Scotland—the Hebrides islands by motorbike. Benny and the Scottish Blues was published in 1989 or 1990. I can’t recall exactly, as I no longer have a copy of it. I remember at the time—I had only recently graduated from college—I had such a great feeling of accomplishment seeing my words in book form. By that time, I’d had a few poems accepted in journals and literary magazines, and, as you know there is always great elation even when just a single poem gets accepted for publication; but a book, well that’s another kettle of fish.  From that moment on, no matter what else consumed me in my life (and there were many distractions), I was always writing—both fiction and poetry with the intention of publishing these as books.

How does your most recent work compare to your previous?

Well my most recent work, IRØNCLAD, an illustrated hybrid collection, is coming out mid October with Spuyten Duyvil. I always try and approach a new work from a fresh angle, and IRØNCLAD is my first book that was not written on a typewriter or in word-processing software, but directly into the layout program, InDesign. The reasoning was to try and take advantage of the actual typography of the poem or prose piece. The book is set in the fictional world of The Iron Plier Society, who themselves are trying to make sense of their own archeological record. Fragments uncovered in the geological strata inform the book and the narrative. As you move deeper into the book, you discover, fragment by fragment, artifact by artifact, what appears to be the evolution of a civilization—yet, you can never quite be sure that what you have discovered in the damp earth faithfully represents your progenitors intentions (every interpretation comes with its own set of biases also). And, it is easy to misinterpret those too!

My previous collection, which came out with Unlikely Books in May this year, is the poetry collection Spells for the Wicked, which certainly informs IRØNCLAD. In fact, you might say that IRØNCLAD is the culmination of many years of addressing the subject of mythology and how it informs the later narrative and structure of a given society or culture.

How does it feel different?

Although they are two entirely different books, narratively, linguistically, typographically even, they do address some of the same principles in their own fashion. I consider myself a writer of books rather that a writer of individual poems or pieces of fiction. Much of my more recent work crosses the boundaries between fiction and poetry. In my earlier work, I may have been more concerned with presenting a given poetic form. These days I allow the book to inform me, rather than lying down rules in advance. Essentially though, I always try to approach each book project with a slightly different angle: be it the method for writing it (i.e. handwritten, typewriter, direct to computer), the environment I am writing in, or in some cases with a collaborator, the collaborative process itself. All of these things can significantly influence the outcome and inform the work, sometimes in surprising ways.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Actually, I have dabbled in both poetry and fiction since the early days. Probably the first thing I actively wrote was a series of collaborative comic strips with my Aussie friend, Brett Cameron, when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I have been an avid reader of all genres since I cracked open my first book. I was writing song lyrics for my high school bands when I was in my teens; and then I took a class on contemporary American poetry in my junior year of high school. Here I discovered ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, Robinson Jeffers, Wallace Stevens, and you might say, I was hooked.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?

That has varied significantly over the years. Fifteen years ago, I spent much time taking notes, familiarizing myself with the world that I was about to immerse myself in—sometimes more than a year—before placing pen to paper. In recent years I am more likely to take notes and do research as I write; and I generally work on several projects at the same time.

Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process?

That varies significantly too. Generally, once I hit upon the first fundamental line or image, the rest comes relatively quickly. The process of refinement is a far longer process for me than the original ‘take’.

Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Both. Depends on the piece / book.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you?

Often with a title, sometimes with a single line, frequently with a visual image of the world I am about to step into.

Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Book, from the very beginning. I occasionally write a standalone poem, but very seldom these days.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

I should say yes, part of—but more so than public readings, listening to audio recordings of my own works. This provides essential sonic information: tone, dynamic, the musicality of the language, which also often informs the written word in return.

Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Yes, absolutely. I have hosted several readings out here in the Berkshires, Boston, and New York City, but I have also read throughout the US and UK at many venues, and will continue to do so. As you also know, together with Australian prose poet, Cassandra Atherton, and New York poet and puppeteer, Jeff Wright, I also run the live streaming literary reading series, Lit Balm. Since 2020, we have held nearly 250 readings, and have featured over 1000 poets and fiction writers across the globe.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing?

Yes, many: among others, the environment and industry, extinction and habitat loss, autocracy and suppression of ideas, language and protolanguage, rear view reductionism and the emergence of meaningfulness, mythology and ritual, fallacy and superstition, the nature of consciousness and expression, the human understanding of time and a linear narrative …

What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work?

I’m not sure I would call it answering questions, but more posing questions and / or presenting narratives in allegorical form that question given tropes.

What do you even think the current questions are?

Too many to list here, but if I were to boil it down to one phrase it might be:

What is the nature of reality?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture?

This is somewhat of a loaded question.

As a writer, as an artist, I like to believe that all of us have something to contribute to our understanding of reality, be it in the micro or the macro, or both. Among other things, I believe it should be every artist’s goal to spread and encourage creativity, and a wide-angled view of the world. Every heartfelt contribution large or small should be seen as a net positive agglomeration for future thinking.

Do they even have one?

I can’t speak for others. Of course, we all know there are always those who seek fame and glory, form above substance. Certainly for me it is the journey rather than any specific end goal. Deeply wrought, well-crafted, and heartfelt work that informs as well as sings has always been my personal preference. Just as in all the arts, there are many authors out there breaking boundaries and helping to shape future thinking. So yes, I believe most authors and artists have their own personal credo and their place in society. Many things including trends, tastes and other ongoing polemics predicate how these resonate within a specific community, how they inspire and resonate with, and influence a culture at large. (Which is another conversation worth having.)

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I have worked with many editors over the years—both with my own work, and at MadHat Press and New American Writing. Editors are essential in teasing works to their greatest potential. Have I worked with difficult editors? Most certainly. Did the processes bear fruit? In some form, always.

At the press, I’ve also had many writers who are difficult to work with, and even those who have scorned editorial advice. Even if it is difficult, my suggestion is to listen intently and deeply consider every adjustment or amendment that your editor proposes. That doesn’t mean you have to agree, but every suggestion is worthy of consideration.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Read voraciously, live vicariously, write voluptuously.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to translation to musical composition)?

There is a natural flow between each of the forms, and as I get older, even more so. I have a short attention span, so it is great for me to have multiple projects in several forms of art going at the same time. I’ll settle in somewhere for a while, but if I feel I’m getting stagnant, I’ll move to another project and return later—sometimes much later.  Also, working in multiple different mediums tends to give you a broader perspective. Each of the various forms inform each other, and help to refine each other.

There is much crossover, in particular with my music and poetry—many of my songs incorporate poems or were inspired by my own poems, and sometimes visa versa.

What do you see as the appeal?

Appeal? I’m not sure that’s really relevant. It’s just the way the creative process works for me personally.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I write on and off throughout the day as and when inspiration arises, however, I also assign 3-4 hours of my afternoon to writing / composing / translating. During that period I allow myself to be completely immersed in the creative process. Typically, I’ll work on MadHat Press affairs in the morning and early afternoon, take my dogs out on an extensive walk after lunch, then hunker in and focus on my own work later in the afternoon.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I move to whichever project seems the most inspiring in the moment—whether that be poetry, fiction, translation, music, or something unexpected.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

What fragrance reminds me of where I come from? Probably sea air.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Everything I have read, seen, experienced, tasted, or touched influences my work. All of the above.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Many. From the dawn of written record—early literature: the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Bible, the Vedas, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Icelandic Eddas; to the Renaissance and beyond: Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe … pretty much all religious texts from the canonical to the lesser known. And then, closer to the current age, many poets and fiction authors, including, W.B. Yeats, Wordsworth, William Blake, George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Italo Calvino, Kafka, Nabokov, Borges, Burgess, Coetzee, Atwood … the list is immense.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Glide gently over a shallow and verdant valley like a bird.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Well, for quite a long period in my adult life, I ran an industrial design company in Switzerland and Shanghai—all the while writing at the same time. It was during my 10 years in Shanghai that I wrote my first novel. I would wake up early around 5 am, work on my novel for a couple of hours, have breakfast, then head to the day job. During those Shanghai years, I would work 80-hour weeks. Weekends were not sacred, but sacrosanct for profit-making ventures. Pure capitalism. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I finally managed to break free and focus on my arts.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

As I’ve said, I’ve done many other things, but the impetus to write / communicate was always there, and has been from the day I may have first been conscious. Somehow I realized early in my life that I needed a language and a medium to impart / present my whims and whimsies, to bring across my unique or alternate manner of experiencing the world. Words seemed to be the best solution.  As you know, I am also lucky to be blessed with art in other forms too. Anyone of those might have been my primary medium, but language always seemed the most direct.

19 - What was the last great book you read?

I read great books every week, but what I’m currently reading is Theodore Roethke’s Straw for the Fire, which I highly recommend.

What was the last great film?

Good question. I recently find myself increasingly re-watching classics from the earliest eras of cinema, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, or Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. Recently I also dig a deep dive in animated movies and was incredibly moved by the 2016 film, La Tortue Rouge (The Red Turtle) which has absolutely no dialogue. I am increasingly bored with the current Hollywood mainstream: superhero movies, CGI science fiction and fantasy offerings, and the thousand and one reworkings of classic tales in a modern context.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Well currently I am working on my newest poetry collection, Mythodology; a novel, The Age of Occasions; and a spoken-word and music album to accompany my collection forthcoming with White Pine Press, No More Animal Poems. My translation of In the House, Still Light, Swiss poet Klaus Merz’ most recent collection, is coming out in November with White Pine Press. Several other translation projects are also in the works.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kevin Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston.   His most recent book is And Yet it Moves (MadHat, 2023) and recent books are The Wild Goose, and Loom. His poems and reviews have appeared in the Partisan Review, Harvard Review, ArtsFuse, Green Mountains Review, and beyond.  Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston area annual of poetry and poetics.  He works as a political economist at Boston University.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I started identifying as a poet when I was twenty, but didn’t publish a book until I was forty.  I had published poems in the Partisan Review and the Harvard Review a decade earlier but in those earlier days I spent more time focusing on publishing the work of others through the magazine compost I co-published.  When I turned forty I published two chapbooks,  Isolate Flecks with Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva press and Looking for Lake Texcoco with Mark Lamoureux’s Cy Gist.  When I held those collections in my hands they propelled me with affirmation and inspiration.  Now And Yet it Moves, published by Marc Vincenz’ MadHat Press, is my eighth book—my fourth full length book.

And Yet it Moves is quite different than my last book, The Wild Goose published by Paul Marion.  The Wild Goose was (largely) written when I was a poet in residence at the Heinrich Boll cottage in Achill, Ireland for two summers. I’m a quarter Irish if my last name didn’t give it away and my father had recently passed.  That book is an exploration of Ireland, my life with my father and beyond.

And Yet it Moves is a pandemic book.  I was shaken by the denial of science and reason in the United States but like Seamus Heaney during ‘The Troubles’ I saved my descriptive rage for the kitchen table but wanted to engage differently as an artist.  As I say in my introduction, this was not the first time we lived in such an era.  I delve into the Medici era in this book, a poetic journey of the rebirth of wonder followed by its denial manifest by Galileo’s imprisonment.  The book is a series of poetic monologues of that time, telling that story.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Our mother took us to the library every weekend and we had to get books.  I read mostly fiction and was taken by Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain.  I read poetry in school but would never pick it up on my own—until I heard Bob Dylan and it was all over.  Wow did he fuse the ‘raw and the cooked’ into one inside and out with a new post-modern sensibility but a meter that sang on its own.  From Dylan I worked backwards being most struck by Williams, Levertov, Rexroth, Patchen, PAZ, Seamus Heaney, O’Hara, Walcott, John Brooks Wheelwright, Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Olson and others before I hit a wall in the early 20th Century.  Then I time machined to Homer, Virgil, and Catullus.
 Through Rexroth I entered the world of Tu Fu, Li Bai and Japanese poets too.  Non-fiction is another story.  I’ve written nine books on the global economy.  Let’s save that for another day.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

There are two kinds of poems I write.  The first are those that just hit me, I’ve referred to those as ‘lightning bolt’ poems.  Something happens or I see something or reflect and then comes what David Hinton calls ‘contact’ and boom I start writing and yeah perhaps 80 percent of what happens when the lightning hits my tree stays on the page in the end.

The other kind of poetry I write are more ‘projects’ as you say.  My first book like that was LOOM, also published by MadHat.  That book, in method, is the most similar to And Yet it Moves because it is an exploration and conversation with a history to make sense of the present—an ‘archaeology of mourning.’   The older and busier I get—rhyming ain’t the day job—the more important these projects are because they are always there for me.  At this point in my life I’m dodging a lot of lightning bolts.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

To finish where I left on the last question I guess, for the lighting bolts I end up collecting those in loose books.  The ‘projects’ are seen as books.  My book Radio Plays published by Dos Madres is somewhere in the middle.  It is a collection of shorter set pieces many of which were lightning bolts—or short storms!

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

A poem doesn’t work for me until I’ve read it looking into a pond of eyes and seeing if I can connect.   Readings are essential for me.  I don’t think I’ve published anything I haven’t read in public or at least walking around my house beforehand.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I think we are all asking who are we, where are we, what are we doing, what are we being.  Like Duncan and Olson I see poetry as an open field for these questions.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The poet is the point of contact with a reality revealed in the creation of the poem and shared.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Most publishers and editors I have encountered either don’t like the book and won’t publish it or like the book and largely publish it as is.  Actually, And Yet it Moves is an exception.  The poems were originally all fairly straight sonnets but Vincenz helped me hone them a bit more to true projective verse and they are now more like those of Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer.  Since they evoke the ruins of the Roman Empire in Renaissance Italy I am calling them ‘ruined sonnets!’

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Don’t try to be someone else.  Sing your own songs and most importantly in your own voice.  Everyone’s is unique and each person is equally incredible.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I work full time.   For the past five years I have had the privilege to be a poet in residence each summer for a few weeks but I use that to take things to the finish line.  In my case I turn off the work laptop at around half time of the Celtics game with the sound off and start working on my poems.  If the game is close I stop the poems and bleed green.  If not I can go on very late sometimes or hit a wall and go to bed.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

As I said earlier, the longer run ‘projects’ are what I move to.  I also write reviews, most recently for the Arts Fuse and Harvard Review… That can help.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The robust smell of my German Shepherd, REXROTH!

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

And Yet it Moves is all of the above—triggered by science, but there are poems in there about Michelangelo, Vasari, Botticelli.  In the background the New York painters of the 1950s and slapping away on a big canvas above me when I write.  On many levels I am engaging with climate change in this book, so nature is there.   In The Wild Goose I evoke Dr. John playing his piano and Desolation Row is always playing in the background.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I listed a bunch earlier in our conversation.  I go back to those the most but am always on a new quest to learn something new.  Homero Aridjis is the poet I have been diving into the most lately, as well as Cid Corman.  I’ve been reading plays a bit more than poetry though, particularly Brian Friel and August Wilson.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Play for the Boston Celtics!

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

NBA Basketball Baby!  But that’s a joke, I’m five foot nine.  That said one of my best friends’ grandma was the Red Auerbach’s secretary and I majored in Physical Therapy for a few semesters thinking I’d be the trainer for the Celtics.  Poetry broke through.  

I should say that part of the motivation for all this is a social justice.  The poetry can go in one way, action in the other.  In my day job I work as a political economist trying to get the institutions of global economic governance to align with the goals of financial stability, human wellbeing, and environmental sustainability.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I played instruments when I was younger.  My mother had us in art classes all the time too.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

That’s new?  I just read Ron Padgett’s DOT, Bernadette Mayer’s Milkweed Smithereens, and the new selected poems of Larry Eigner edited by Jennifer Bartlett. Best book though I’d say has been Homero Aridjis’ new Self Portrait in a Zone of Silence.  Wakefield Press has just come out with an incredible crop of Max Jacob in translation that I recently reviewed for Harvard Review.  Great film?!  My son and I had a blast yesterday watching The Instigators.  Was great to know every neighborhood it was shot in!

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am almost finished with another archaeology of morning, perhaps in some way it is a prequel to the book LOOM I discussed earlier in our conversation.  This book deals with the Tempest of the settlement of Massachusetts, the translation of its land and people to the West, and to the final battle that confirmed colonization.  A truth that lies in the names of so many roads, rivers, and streams here, but is never discussed.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Maxine Chernoff, Light and Clay: New and Selected Poems

 

3.
Roll over, Oscar Wilde. Meet Gertrude Stein
and the Little Sparrow. Meet Jim Morrison and

Chopin too. Deeper and deeper our travels
took us: there was Create, whose indoor toilets
were the first preserved. The tourists

from the cruise had sea legs, as Knossos listed
right or left. The Mexican economist hated
America’s presumptions, he confessed at dinner,
before the ping pong ball disappeared into the Aegean.

I thought Ship of Fools, how doomed
our journeys, felt comfort in moss roses curled
around a railing where men worked sums.
The castle from the Crusades, rehabbed by Mussolini:
palimpsest of wrong ideas: and no plot to save us. (“Zonal”)

I was curious to see a copy of Mill Valley, California poet and editor Maxine Chernoff’s latest, Light and Clay: New and Selected Poems (Cheshire MA: MadHat Press, 2023), a collection that selects poems across six of her nineteen books of poetry—Among the Names (Apogee Press, 2005), The Turning (Apogee Press, 2007) [see my review of such here], To Be Read in the Dark (Omnidawn, 2011), Without (Shearsman Books, 2012) [see my review of such here], Here (Counterpath Press, 2014) [see my review of such here] and Camera (Subito Press, 2017) [see my review of such here]—as well as a healthy opening section of new poems. Focusing on her work with and through sonnets, sequences, extended lines and other lyric structures, Light and Clay exists as a counterpoint to her Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems (MadHat Press, 2019) [see my review of such here], and the two collections paired offer an interesting overview of Chernoff’s attention to poetic structure. “Love’s tender mercies clear the air,” she writes, to open the poem “Traced,” “Unhinging the gate to practiced longing. / Tied to life, you spill into water, deeper / Than any atmosphere.” Chernoff’s poems extend lines of thought across great distances, whether the line, the poem or as a sequence of pulled-apart sentences, offering a lyric that works to articulate and examine intellectual and physical space. Hers is a lyric, essentially, of seeing, and what she sees is illuminating. As the short poem “Granted” ends: “We stayed in bed for years / and took our cures patiently / from each other’s cups. / We read Bleak House and / stored our money in socks. / Nothing opened as we did.”

Whereas her prose poem selected opens with an introduction by Robert Archambeau, this collection exists without, which, as regular readers of this space are already fully aware, I consider a severe oversight for any selected or collected; it is important to place writer and writing within context, and offer why and how this collection was decided upon, let alone shaped. For example: did the author make the selections herself? What was the process of these books selected, and selected from, and not others? Either way, opening with the sixteen-part sonnet sequence, “Zonal,” the poems in the “new” section employ an increased complexity (compared to the other poems throughout), providing a layering of image, insight, craft and instability, finely-woven with deceptive ease. The shift across the body of her work, at least as presented in this two hundred page-plus volume, is intriguing, subtle and even clarifying. This is an incredible work by a severely underrated poet, sliding under the radar for more than enough time (a recent folio on her work did appear recently in Denver Quarterly, Vol 57 No. 4 (2023), edited by Lea Graham, although the issue itself doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere on their website).

You Took the Dare

To live here and there, as recluse
and as host. While everything exploded
and flames turned water red, you
suggested a menu and gave to
a proper cause. Nothing endured
the losses around you, the final note
that sounded past alarm. A cloudy
resemblance of what once sufficed came
to be known as grace as you listened
to grass growing, to a boy praying
near the great stone wall. Crisis after
crisis stacked up like planes in fog.
You counted moss-covered bricks near
the former factory, where, at sunset,
brown light flickered.
What else to do but live?