A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me

By Peter Gizzi b. 1959 Peter Gizzi

If today and today I am calling aloud

If I break into pieces of glitter on asphalt

bits of sun, the din

if tires whine on wet pavement

everything humming

If we find we are still in motion

and have arrived in Zeno’s thought, like

if sunshine hits marble and the sea lights up

we might know we were loved, are loved

if flames and harvest, the enchanted plain

If our wishes are met with dirt

and thyme, thistle, oil,

heirloom, and basil

or the end result is worry, chaos

and if “I should know better”

If our loves are anointed with missiles

Apache fire, Tomahawks

did we follow the tablets the pilgrims suggested

If we ask that every song touch its origin

just once and the years engulfed

If problems of identity confound sages,

derelict philosophers, administrators

who can say I am found

if this time you, all of it, this time now

If nothing save Saturdays at the metro and

if rain falls sidelong in the platz

doorways, onto mansard roofs

If enumerations of the fall

and if falling, cities rocked

with gas fires at dawn

Can you rescind the ghost’s double nakedness

hungry and waning

if children, soldiers, children

taken down in schools

if burning fuel

Who can’t say they have seen this

and can we sing this

if in the auroras’ reflecting the sea,

gauze touching the breast

Too bad for you, beautiful singer

unadorned by laurel

child of thunder and scapegoat alike

If the crowd in the mind becoming

crowded in street and villages, and trains

run next to the freeway

If exit is merely a sign

Source: The Outernationale (Wesleyan University Press, 2007)

Biography

Educated at New York University, Brown University, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, poet Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, including Threshold Songs (2011), The Outernationale (2007), and Artificial Heart (1998). Influenced by Ezra Pound, the Beats, and John Ashbery, Gizzi uses both narrative and lyrical gestures to engage and question distance and light in his search for the unmapped. . . .

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