The Secret Reader

1927 –

I write my unread book for you who in
a life or day will find it in a box
or cave or dead man’s pocket or the inn
of mountain light where we awake while cocks
of twilight scream our solitude. Our fate
is to be free. No public ink. No hot
or cold inferno of the private wait.
Just this apocryphon which I forgot
for you, the secret friend. You are like me:
one soul fleshed out for ecstasy and night,
this planet’s only birth and death, unknown
like everything. Saul lied about the light,
for no one rose again. We are alone,
alive with secret words. Then blackly free

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Mount Sinai Hospital. My mother lay
in a good corner room with lots of sun.
The surgeon traced the steps of her death dance.
A soldier then, I’d flown in from France
where in Périgueux’s children’s ward, one day
I saw a young girl in a coma. Sun
came through glass walls; the child was beautiful,

Willis Barnstone

2015

Gospel of Clouds

On cloudy Sundays clouds are in my heart
as if my brother came, as if the rain
lingered among the mushrooms and the art
of freedom washed into the murder train
or rinsed the peat bog soldiers of the camp.¹
On cloudy Sundays clouds are with Joe Hill.
Last night I dreamt he was alive. The tramp

Willis Barnstone

2015

The Good

On the first morning of the moon, in land
under the birds of Ur, before the flood
dirties the memory of a couple banned
from apples and the fatal fire of blood,
Adam and Eve walk in the ghetto park,
circling a tree. They do not know the way
to make their bodies shiver in the spark

Willis Barnstone

2015

Poems

The Secret Reader

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

Poems

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The Secret Reader

More by this poet

A Sunny Room at Mount Sinai, 1955

Gospel of Clouds

The Good

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