Amicus by Karl Kirchwey - The New Criterion

Poems

November 2009

Amicus

Burke

was right!

These mornings, I wake feeling as if, during the night,
I had been tried by a jury of my peers
and found—But wait, fellow citizens! Fifty-two years
and no appeal? Is there no merciful alternate?

All those I have loved come by in a long parade,
their faces strangely tender, etched and grave
with my own lost intent and their belief.
Through half-closed eyelids I see those who have died,

glaring or bashful in the little tea-lights of my sleep.
Oaring the thick medium time, they seem to yaw
toward me in a sort of pregnant slo-mo,
but I can never read their straining lips,

and when dawn strands ...

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Karl Kirchwey is the author of five books of poems, including The Happiness of This World: Poetry and Prose (2007).

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