Two poems by Gary Wilder
Stirred (BK Reverie)
what scandal this joy
in a time of death
wandering peopled perimeter
of urban lake wet with
sun senses crossed
insides out
how do you ruin me
reverberates
reckoning booklyn to austin
to memphis to here miles
and hours and years
do you know what five
minutes feels like
are you ready
idle fellows casting lines in
murky shallows wet with
sun maybe hopeful or only
certain this cannot
be the end
blood and oxygen suffuse
parched tissue stiffened
sinews straining pulse
seeing stars spinning off
axis to keening violin
are you too
wet with sun
***
slowly sinking
suspended in a jar
of jam beholding
the honey colored
world
slowly
sinking
***
Gary Wilder, is a Professor of Anthropology with cross-appointments in History and French at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he is also Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) and The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
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