Rotogravure

By Cynthia Zarin b. 1959 Cynthia Zarin

There was another life we knew each other

We were poor and hungry we lived in a palace

Cats supped in our place aloft we ate air

Trees were our nursemaids the moss sang to us

The door was heavy the reed gate was smashed

We drove through smoke we rode in carriages

We were far from the shore the ocean was near

The sky was jute the wet earth gray ash

We spoke in English in Russian we argued

The moon wore a mask the sun mirrored its moods

In the desert the thirsty went down to the water

Hummingbirds swarmed lions roared in quarries

Silence is an envelope noise is paper

This is a story poems come after stories

Source: The Watercourse (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)

Biography

Cynthia Zarin is a poet, journalist, and children’s book author. She earned a BA at Harvard and an MFA Columbia University, and has taught at Yale. Poet-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, she has also been a long-time contributor to the New Yorker. Known for her exacting language, Ernest Hilbert noted that Zarin “composes formal, meditative poems that remind the reader of Elizabeth Bishop and Richard Wilbur.” . . .

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