This Can’t Be

By Bruce Smith b. 1946 Bruce Smith

the place of consequence, the station of his embrace.

Or else I’m not son enough to see

the innocence and the spiritual fiddlings

in the uneven floorboards and joists,

in the guttural speech of the pipes,

in the limp and the lack of heat.

All we need, all we really need is light!

And let there be a roof with no leaks.

Oh father landlord, fill up all our breaches.

He gives himself to the cracks; into the chinks

my father lowers his bone,

the do-it-yourself funeral. He holds the wires

in his teeth. He strips the insulation back.

If it’s black, it’s juiceless; if it’s red, elegiac.

Source: Silver and Information (University of Georgia Press, 1985)

Biography

Originally from Philadelphia, Bruce Smith is the author of several books of poems, including The Other Lover (2000), a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Influenced by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Smith’s poetry moves like jazz, incorporating images and narratives into a startling, musically unified whole. In a 2007 interview, Smith explained his poetry’s aspiration to song: “When the language . . .

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