Hayden Carruth (1921 - 2008)

"Indeed poetry is bounded by silence on all sides, is almost defined by silence.

Hayden Carruth

April Clean-up

by Hayden Carruth

He isn't quite a eunuch but that's
what he calls himself, this old
two-beat codger on this spring
afternoon picking up the winter's
crop of twigs and bark from the lawn
to make it "look nicer" and to supply
the house with kindling next winter
for himself or his heirs, meanwhile coughing
and gasping, cursing the pain in his back,
thinking always of the days when
each year after the run-off he was in
the woods with the early trout lillies
and violets and with his ax, saw,
and canthook, doing a man's work
that has no connection with sex at all. 

Sonnet VII

by Hayden Carruth

Dearest, I never knew such loving. There
in that glass tower in the alien city, alone,
we found what somewhere I had always known
exists and must exist, this fervent care,
this lust of tenderness. Two were aware
how in hot seizure, bone pressed to bone
and liquid flesh to flesh, each separate moan
was pleasure, yes, but most in each other's share.
Companions and discoverers, equal and free,
so deep in love we adventured and so far
that we became perhaps more than we are,
and now being home is hardship. Therefore are we
diminished? No. We are of the world again
but still augmented, more than we've ever been.