Friday, September 26, 2008

Names

Another great poem crossed my path in The New Yorker. I'm still getting through it, for total comprehension (if that's at all possible), but I wanted to share it to see if anyone else read it (or will today) and thinks anything of it.

It's called "Names" by Marilyn Hacker.

Be mindful of names. They'll etch themselves
like daily specials on the window glass
in a delible medium. They'll pass
transformed, erased, a cloud the wind dissolves
above the ruckus of the under-twelves
on the slide, the toddlers on the grass,
the ragged skinny guy taking a piss
on a bench, skirt tucked around her knees.
A sparrow lands in the japonica;
as if it were a signal, all at once
massed pigeons rush up from adjacent trees,
wingbeats intrusive and symphonic--a
near-total silence is their clear response.

So what do you think of the poem?

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