Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
Please note that some of our content may not be available on this web archive at this time. If you cannot find a specific article, please contact us.
Articles
Apophatic
Not with the myth and phosphorus of metaphor. Notwith lines of force looped in true-love knots.Not by dumping the urn and reading the ashes. Notthrough sonic wantonness, but not...
Polutropos
Sing, O Muse, of the man of many reverses,the man with a mind of many winding ways,turned around and turned away from homethere on the open labyrinthine sea,of the...
Søren
He is a churchyard. In his grasses, crossesHave blossomed once again, like quartered rosesThat know the real crowns are made of thorns.Redolent cedar, these, both kings and thronesIn one,...
Stormchild
A raindrop mirrorsThe whole typhoonStretched like a spoonUpon her clear Curvaceous skin,Synoptic nudeFully tattooedFor one instant With her whole kind’sCreation mythSo that her fall Expresses allThe other mindsShe’s fallen...
Mirror Work
The peak that paints the lakeIs quick to break. A height becomes a depth,A life a death. An Eiger sinks beneathThe eager cleat As seeking shows us whatWe sought...
Metamorphoses
A turkey, turnkey, turncoat, dovecote, dovewaddles and wavers and wings her way above,metempsychoses, metamorphosescrossing horizons, orisons, seasons, seas, slow-shutter shudder, each shape reshaped, rebornas cochon, cocoon, raccoon, acorn, corn,and...
Slowdown
On your thirtieth birthday, you find that your clothes Belong to someone slimmer. It’s like only your socks haven’t shrunk in the wash. From then on, you remember Undressing...
Slowdown
On your thirtieth birthday, you find that your clothes Belong to someone slimmer. It’s like only your socks haven’t shrunk in the wash. From then on, you remember Undressing...
Apres moi, le Deluge
You needn’t be born a Bourbon To dream your funereal deluge, Some climactic climatic disturbance To rain out the end of your reign. A desultory drizzle of tears Is...
Triplicity
Infinity requires us to count to three, our calculus and three-step proof. Dust cubed is dust: The sum of love, unequalled, spans the fingers of a single hand. The...
Anchorite
It would seem, from the sound of it, slang ?In Her Majesty’s Navy, say, circa ?Trafalgar”the deckhand whose job was ?To heave-ho the anchor aboard, ?The chain like a...
The Children’s Crusade of 1212
Aching for Acre, in a sacred ague, They’re setting out. They wear only their nightgowns, These ageless androgynes, these little angels Who raise their wooden swords and hymns of...
The Christ-Frost
After I had burned alive a spell, spellbound by the burning that bound me, I saw an Ice Cross rising down to me through sea- blue sky. This Ice...
Prayer
Lord, late though I am, slide the lathe And shape, shave me. Shear me wraith- Slim, slave-thin; flay the skin in moth- Wings off my soul’s loathed sheath. Wrath-...
Heavy Water
Heavy water, holy water, we are weighed on By your waterweight, you proton- Poisoned fission vintage we dare not sip. A drip weighs torrents on the tongue and lip....