Bill Knott Poems

I don't dare speak too loudly,
some timbres could be fatal--

that string is not too strong
...

Our love has chosen its appropriate gesture
Which when viewed in the midst of all the gestures
It didn't choose seems almost insignificant.
...

The taller the monument, the more impatient our luggage.
Look, look, a graveyard has fancy dirt.
Historians agree: this is the pebble which beaned Goliath.
Every billboard is theoretically as beautiful as what lies unseen behind it.
...

“...here thy generations endeth in accord.”

I physically resemble my mother
And father and therefore must have been
...

Why are all the survivors of the needle's eye
nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
we proceed it seems only to precede;
...

Speak like a singularity, a lack
residing deep inside every lock, just
past the point keys can jab: against all thrust
make safe-ensure your door's core is held
...

'My age, my beast!' - Osip Mandelstam

On the lips a taste of tolling we are blind
The light drifts like dust over faces
...