Ben Belitt Poems

Bringing "only what is needed—essential
toilet articles" in a paper bag,
dressed as for dying, one sees the dying plainly.
...

...at the still point, there the dance is.
—T. S. Eliot
The errand into the maze,
Emblem, the heel's blow upon space,
...

Rise, cleanly trust, divided star,
And spend that delicate fraud upon the night—
A lover's instance moving mindful air
To make its peace in dedicated light
...

for Jean Brockway
When the walkers-on-water went under,
the bog-walkers came out of the barberry
thickets, booted in gum to their hips,
...

The orange-peelers of Mérida, in the wrought-
iron midday, come with mechanical skewers
and live oranges, to straddle the paths
on caissons of bicycle wheels
...

Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
—Genesis
When the Deluge had passed,
into my head, by twos, came the creeping things,
...

They splay at a bend of the road, rifles slung, the
shadows minimal, their hands tugging their slings by
the upper swivel to ease the routine of the march.
...

When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.
—John Keats
1.

You are here
...

When last we came this pleasant way
The hedgerows blossomed, high and hard,
And blue with shade the violets lay
In every cherry-lightened yard.
...