Alpine Wedding

By Ralph Angel b. 1951 Ralph Angel

All dark morning long the clouds are rising slowly up

beneath us, and we are fast asleep.

The mountains unmove

intensely. And so do we. Meadows

look down.

A city there looks up and

stirs a little. Adrift the rolling tiled roofs of

buildings, the deadly

trains of grinding sand and morning—

a spy unfolds his paper,

the coffee’s served.

A bride and groom stand shivering on a tarmac

in the mist, and

they are happy. Each one

and all of us entangled, the room is moist with us,

the house unfinished, windowless,

and we are fast asleep.

The brother of the groom can’t get

close enough. He leans against the brightest ridge

and ladder, the sucking

sound of memory

as heaven picks up speed and

hurtles through his burning skin

its frozen blankets

to the sun.

Source: Twice Removed (Sarabande Books, 2001)

Biography

Born in Seattle, Washington, Ralph Angel earned a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of California at Irvine. Angel is the author of the poetry collections Anxious Latitudes (1986); Neither World (1995), winner of the James Laughlin Award; Twice Removed (2001); and Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986–2006 (2006), winner of the 2007 PEN USA Literary Award in Poetry. His translation of the work . . .

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