Ex Machina

By Linda Gregerson b. 1950 Linda Gregerson

When love was a question, the message arrived

in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura

was hardly to be believed. For flight,

it took three stagehands: two

on the pulleys and one on the flute. And you

thought fancy rained like grace.

Our fog machine lost in the Parcel Post, we improvised

with smoke. The heroine dies of tuberculosis after all.

Remorse and the raw night air: any plausible tenor

might cough. The passions, I take my clues

from an obvious source, may be less like climatic events

than we conventionalize, though I’ve heard

of tornadoes that break the second-best glassware

and leave everything else untouched.

There’s a finer conviction than seamlessness

elicits: the Greeks knew a god

by the clanking behind his descent.

The heart, poor pump, protests till you’d think

it’s rusted past redemption, but

there’s tuning in these counterweights,

celebration’s assembled voice.

Source: Fire in the Conservatory (Dragon Gate, 1982)

Biography

Linda Gregerson is the author of several collections of poetry and literary criticism. A Renaissance scholar, a classically trained actor, and a devotee of the sciences, Gregerson produces lyrical poems informed by her expansive reading that are inquisitive, unflinching, and tender. Tracing the connections she finds between science and poetry, Gregerson says, “I think there are rhythms of thought, fragile propositions about the . . .

Continue reading this biography