POEM
A Diamond
A Translation for Robert Jones
A diamond
Is there
At the heart of the moon or the branches or my nakedness
And there is nothing in the universe like diamond
Nothing in the whole mind.
The poem is a seagull resting on a pier at the end of the ocean.
A dog howls at the moon
A dog howls at the branches
A dog howls at the nakedness
A dog howling with pure mind.
I ask for the poem to be as pure as a seagull’s belly.
The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond
Two words called seagull are peacefully floating out where the
waves are.
The dog is dead there with the moon, with the branches, with
my nakedness
And there is nothing in the universe like diamond
Nothing in the whole mind.
Jack Spicer,“A Diamond” from My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems 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)
Although known primarily among a coterie of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of his . . . MORE »
More Poems by Jack Spicer
Five Poems From “Helen: A Revision”
MORE »
