Poetry Isn’t Trending Out of fashion now — The long hours spent Making and doing, Turning and shaping lines, For a dwindling clientele Of other poets and academics Who might notice The grain of a line, A phrase honed smooth Or left rough as timber. No one else cares to look. And yet the trade persists — If trade is even the word — Since there is nothing to gain. A dying art Like the fletching of arrows, Or the mending of clocks With a dex

Lifting Up of the Hands By lamp and by oil, we hunger the hours as the dusk's frost sets in. There is time: The trucks to Treblinka are not ready yet and there's bread to be had. But the water and bowl are for the washing of hands. (It's what tradition commands.) Fingers make moves in the silence of thought like chess players at their difficult tables. A mouth is turned open and another is shut, and dusk in due course is steadily swallowed, with every crumb of affliction