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Poems

April 1996

The naked truth

by Charles Edward Eaton

 

In the twilight filled with late, late roses,
Camellias, sasanqua, not yet taken by the frost,
I wonder what order, and disorder, the coming night imposes.

 

All afternoon on the sunporch I sat naked in the sun,
Thinking of things composed, imposed, myself a kind
         of flower,
Late, late, but not yet overblown, irremediably done.

 

The night, of course, will have a place for me:
Order, disorder—the huge, hybrid, cosmic plan—
I remember the shining youth standing by a brilliant sea,

 

Also naked, feeling like some growth, some product
        of the water—
Ah, that blue, blue garden of long ago,
Promising to be fertile for all my dreams no matter,

 

No matter what. Now this formal matrix and the mellow
...

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Charles Edward Eaton's seventeeth volume of poetry, The Work of the Sun: New and Selecte Poems is forthcoming in January from Cornwall Books.


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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 14 April 1996, on page 38

Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

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