Roofs

By Stephen Sandy b. 1934 Stephen Sandy

Sewn straw, exact pattern. Fields of rice-sprigs

evenly set, a mile of herringbone tweed.

The town, a sea of gunmetal, fish-scale tiles.

By morning each floor a casserole of pillows,

coverlets, comforters, towels: flown nests. Imprint

of bodies, fading. They fold the beds away,

the room waits empty all day.

All day the bodies

circle, leaving no impression on each

other. Tooled in the foundry of the streets.

School-caps, factory-packed subway, miracle train:

one territorial imperative,

an emperor’s.

On his platform one yard square

perched on a roof that slopes in waves of tiles

up toward other tiled cascades, the karate student

for hours does running in place, deep knee bends

on his surfboard perch. All his free time to make

his body efficient, tight, exact, rising

and falling, mint piston pumping in its shaft.

Source: The Thread (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)

Biography

Stephen Sandy studied poetry with Robert Lowell and Archibald MacLeish, earned a PhD from Harvard University, and traveled to Japan on a Fulbright Visiting Lectureship. He is the author of more than a half dozen collections of poetry and has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Council on the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

Stephen Sandy’s collections include Riding to . . .

Continue reading this biography