David Swerdlow
Weight and Demeanor
Nearly October and the sky draws near; an approachable moon
waxes humbly above the barley field. Our present, with its noiseless hinge,
swings like a gate through the luminous world.
Our hill is empty. Our maple is empty. What we know of justice, its weight
and demeanor, outlines the slope and the leaves, is partial to the edge of radiance
and shadow. Thus we remember a place in Croatia where summer was fixed
with a fabled moon over the stone shore where a ship returned, its bow silvered
with weather. Old women formed on the rocks, held small boxes
of a war that descended the hills and burned everything. Only the strawberry roots
came back quickly. “Your boat is beautiful,” they whispered, “Your boat is beautiful,”
they danced. The luminous world caresses our feet, is placed in our hands
in this form of wild fruit. We love
to taste the figs and the brandy under this empty and beautiful moon; we love
that our promises are stones, small and dazzling, along a lit road.
Weight and Demeanor
Nearly October and the sky draws near; an approachable moon
waxes humbly above the barley field. Our present, with its noiseless hinge,
swings like a gate through the luminous world.
Our hill is empty. Our maple is empty. What we know of justice, its weight
and demeanor, outlines the slope and the leaves, is partial to the edge of radiance
and shadow. Thus we remember a place in Croatia where summer was fixed
with a fabled moon over the stone shore where a ship returned, its bow silvered
with weather. Old women formed on the rocks, held small boxes
of a war that descended the hills and burned everything. Only the strawberry roots
came back quickly. “Your boat is beautiful,” they whispered, “Your boat is beautiful,”
they danced. The luminous world caresses our feet, is placed in our hands
in this form of wild fruit. We love
to taste the figs and the brandy under this empty and beautiful moon; we love
that our promises are stones, small and dazzling, along a lit road.
David Swerdlow’s work has appeared previously in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, West Branch, The Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the author of two col