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In the Gloom, the Gold

Rachel Hadas

If our days were honeycombed with cells,waxy partitions, then the gold could oozeand spill its gleam and sweetnessas easily as light traverses space.Are honeycombs so porous, though? Can lightpass...

Cold Prose

Rachel Hadas

For this last half year I have been troubled by the disease (as I may call it) of translation; the cold prose fits of it . . . are...

Vowels into Colors

Rachel Hadas

A mauve, E grey, I dark, U green, O . . . range.I do not see you, vowels, in color, soany paraphrase is clumsy, strange.But you bleed into one...

Home Improvements

Rachel Hadas

M ellow and glowing with autumnal redA nd also ochre striped with golden light,R epainted bedroom with a brand new bedL eft made up, crisp sheets awaiting night;O ld...

New City

Rachel Hadas

Winter strains toward spring.A bird is singing in a leafless tree.The river gleams, the sidewalks glint with iceor with a hint of possibility.A blade of sun bisects the afternoonstreet....

There Are Books in the House

Rachel Hadas

For Gerd Stern The row of books is talking like a ghostin mildewy damp voices. Look at me.Choose me as I was chosen by your host. Each guest’s a...

Balancing

Rachel Hadas

To land in a story whose end I do not know— as if we ever saw to any end: I try to keep my balance, high and low. The...

Blue, Red, Blue

Rachel Hadas

After two clashing days—ultramarine      overlaid with vermilion— it came to me late the third afternoon       that as between anger and grief there’s no comparison. The choice is easy....

Slow Green

Rachel Hadas

The elements were stark: a winter wall,snow, ice, snapped wrist. Through the breakI could just glimpse the color of the bone.But cold and white, the January crust,weren’t the whole...

Equipoise

Rachel Hadas

Early light slants low across the lawn.Cuplike, this little valley brims with sun.Pages fill and empty. In the mistof a still morning, nothing’s out of reach.Decades fade, the past...

When the Wind Blows

Rachel Hadas

I would have liked to linger in this room, But a rough wind was blowing. To wake up and go back to sleep beside you, But dawn was showing....

My Mother’s Smile

Rachel Hadas

Her hair still hardly touched with grey, and wound in gleaming braids around her head, my mother, who in life was not so given to smiling, grinned in last...

At the Recital

Rachel Hadas

Word trickled down the aisle that he had died. My first response: how did they even know? Grief was an afterthought. He’d long been gone; had only just sufficiently...

A Crack of Light

Rachel Hadas

Lyric maneuvers through a narrow space, a blade of light squeezed under a dark door, hence more condensed (less being more): a distillation of the day’s events, white underbelly...

Complete Poussiniana

Rachel Hadas

Deep in myth, these galleries keep their counsel but re-distribute all the elements. Nymph rides goat, at-tended by a satyr who pats her rump to help her keep her...