20 OCT 05
At her new (second) blog, Laura Carter has been posting some beautiful work from the New Collected Poems of George Oppen (I'm not a desert-island-ten-books type but--definitely, this book). Back before I acquired the New Collected, I came upon a photo online (here) of a signed & folded typescript of Oppen's poem "Alpine." And although he made subsequent revisions, this is my favorite version:
Alpine
We were hiding
Somewhere in the Alps
In a barn among animals. We knew
Our daughter should not know
We were there. It was cold
Was the point of the dream
And the snow was falling
Which must be an old dream of families
Dispersing into adulthood
And the will cowers
In the given
The outlaw winds
That move within barns
A public
Music
As tho one had lost
The one who is sleeping
And his enviable songs
Does that one die
First as one dies
And the distinction of what one does
And what is done to him blurrs
Bodies dream selves
For themselves
From the substance
Of the cold
Yet we move
Are moving
Are we not
Does one hear the heavy moving
Of the past in barns
. . . . .
