A Reason

By Barbara Guest 1920–2006 Barbara Guest

That is why I am here

not among the ibises. Why

the permanent city parasol

covers even me.

It was the rains

in the occult season. It was the snows

on the lower slopes. It was water

and cold in my mouth.

A lack of shoes

on what appeared to be cobbles

which were still antique

Well wild wild whatever

in wild more silent blue

the vase grips the stems

petals fall the chrysanthemum darkens

Sometimes this mustard feeling

clutches me also. My sleep is reckoned

in straws

Yet I wake up

and am followed into the street.

Barbara Guest, “A Reason” from Selected Poems (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1995). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1995)

Biography

Barbara Guest rose to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of an informal group of writers known as the New York school of poets whose membership included Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler. Their innovative approach to poetry was influenced by modern art, especially surrealism and abstract expressionism. Guest drew on her own background in art (she worked for Art News magazine in the 1950s) to create poetry . . .

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