Photo of Melville; Back Room, Old Bookstore

By Stephen Sandy b. 1934 Stephen Sandy

I passed him by at first. From the photograph

Peered sepia eyes, blindered, unappeased

From a lair of brows and beard: one not amazed

At anything, as if to have looked enough

Then turned aside worked best for him—as if

Night vision was the discipline that eased

The weight of what he saw. A man’s gaze posed

Too long in the sun goes blank; comes to grief.

That face could be a focus for this back room,

For pack-rat papers strewn as if in rage,

Fond notes unread: each wary eye a phial

Unstopped to let huge Melville out, to calm

The sea of pages; Melville in older age:

The grown man’s sleepy defiance of denial.

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 . . .

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