Elegy a Little

By Donald Revell b. 1954 Donald Revell

Linoleum and half a dozen eggs

In 1960

Many towered Ilium

A brand name and a shopping list too

Memory distinguishes all things from

Only nothing

I was born and grew

Rooms stacked up into houses

A few trees (maples) welted in their seasons

Wildly like sea birds in crude oil

What amazes

Me now amazed me always but never

Often eyesight is prophetic instantly

Seeing broken eggs on the linoleum

In the kitchen 1960

I saw a broken lifetime further

On as I see now my happy sister

Donald Revell, “Elegy a Little” from Arcady: Poems © 2002 by Donald Revell. Reprinted by permission of Donald Revell.

Source: Arcady (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)

Biography

Born in the Bronx, Donald Revell received his PhD at SUNY Buffalo and is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, translations, and essays. Steeped in the work of Henry David Thoreau and William Carlos Williams, Revell’s poetry is “seriously Christian but not doctrinaire, mystical without setting intellect aside, angry over political matters without ever growing stale or shrill, and more often joyful than any other . . .

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