POEM
Berkeley in Time of Plague
Plague took us and the land from under us,
Rose like a boil, enclosing us within.
We waited and the blue skies writhed awhile
Becoming black with death.
Plague took us and the chairs from under us,
Stepped cautiously while entering the room
(We were discussing Yeats); it paused awhile
Then smiled and made us die.
Plague took us, laughed, and reproportioned us,
Swelled us to dizzy, unaccustomed size.
We died prodigiously; it hurt awhile
But left a certain quiet in our eyes.
Jack Spicer, “Berkeley in Time of Plague” from My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008). Used by permission of Peter Gizzi for The Estate of Jack Spicer.
Source: My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)
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