1
At focus in the national
Park’s ellipse a marker
Draws tight the guys of
Miles, opposite the national
Obelisk with its restless oval
Peoples who shall be
Deeply drawn to its
Austerities: or
For a moment try the mystery
Of the god-like eye, before
Our long climb down past relic
Schoolboy names and states
And one foolish man
Climbs up, his death high
In his elliptic face.
2
A double highway little
Used in early spring
Goes to the end of the land
Where Washington’s chandeliers
Are kept, his beds and chairs,
His roped-off relic kitchen
Spits, his pans; his floors
Are worn underneath the dead
Pilgrims’ feet; outside
The not-so-visited tomb;
And over the field and fence
His legendary river:
And so I walk although
The day is cold for this;
I eat a thin slice
Of bread and one remarkable
Egg perfectly shaped,
A perfect oriental por-
Celain sheen of white.
Suddenly the lost
Ghosts of his life
Broke from the trees and from the cold
Mud pools where he played
A boy and set as a man
The sand glint of his boot,
The flick of his coat on the weeds;
His wheels click in the single road.
John Logan, “The Monument and the Shrine” from John Logan: The Collected Poems. Copyright © 1989 by The Estate of John Logan. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source:
John Logan: The Collected Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 1989)
The late John Logan "was considered one of the superb lyrical poets of his generation," his publisher A. Poulin, Jr., told the Los Angeles Times. "He referred to poetry as a ballet for the ear." Logan, who was also the founder-editor of the poetry magazine Choice, is remembered as the inventor of what poet Hayden Carruth, writing in the American Book Review, once termed "postacademic academic poetry." Carruth explained the term . . .
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