Another Life

By Howard Moss 1922–1987 Howard Moss

There might be the quibble of birds and the swag

Of a river and a distantly belled

Altar of animals, softly spoken;

Certainly cattail, sumac, and fern

Would rise from the marshes nearby, revealed

In forms too perfect to envy trees—

Not trying for larger and larger keepsakes.

Cryptic and subtle green, hedgerows

Hiding mysterious deer, the start

Of a rabbit, as if towers and clouds

Had suddenly shadowed an open field—

These would be the events of the day,

Life having narrowed down to please

Natural hungers and thirsts, the grass

Thick at our feet, and, above our heads,

The stars, their fireworks anemones.

What shall I say of the house? Or you?

Only industrious ghosts would know

How lazily cropping up the view

Would make the impossible possible;

Nothing but weekdays would blankly graze

On time’s oblivious pastures, free

At last of motive and thought, and we,

Becoming ourselves so naturally,

Would never say, looking up at the sky,

Another life is shining in the sky.

Source: New Selected Poems (Atheneum Publishers, 1985)

Biography

Howard Moss was the poetry editor of the New Yorker for almost forty years. In that influential capacity, this quiet, unassuming man was one of the key figures in American letters in the late twentieth century, boosting the careers of many young poets by publishing their work in one of the few mass circulation magazines which bought poetry and paid well for it. Writing in World Literature Today, Ashley Brown observed that "it . . .

Continue reading this biography