Poems June 2004
A hill
The net of stars that holds the night in place,
with Cassiopeia and Berenices Hair
as fixed as a cage across the dome of space,
with Cygnus, the Lion and the Little Bear
and Taurus tame, with Orion lying there
as long as the ground youre standing on is flat,
theyre all too motionless to wonder at;
but stand on a hill, at an angle to the sky,
and its not so much that you look them in the eye;
its this: Orion, the Bear, the Gemini
go wheeling around an evening gone askew
the whole horizon pitched and out of true,
the night undone and still in the making, new
and enough off balance to be dazzled by.
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 22 Number 10, on page 31
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