Linda Gregg

All that is uncared for.
Left alone in the stillness
in that pure silence married
to the stillness of nature.
...

She sits on the mountain that is her home
and the landscapes slide away. One goes down
and then up to the monastery. One drops away
to a winnowing ring and a farmhouse where a girl
...

When I go into the garden, there she is.
The specter holds up her arms to show
that her hands are eaten off.
She is silent because of the agony.
...

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
...

I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
...

Very long ago when the exquisite celadon bowl
that was the mikado's favorite cup got broken,
no one in Japan had the skill and courage
to mend it. So the pieces were taken back
...

Eight deer on the slope
in the summer morning mist.
The night sky blue.
Me like a mare let out to pasture.
...

What things are steadfast? Not the birds.
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
The stars do not blow away as we do.
...

for Michele (1966-1972)
Michele has become another dead little girl. An easy poem.
Instant Praxitelean. Instant seventy-five year old photograph
of my grandmother when she was a young woman with shadows
...

The young men ride their horses fast
on the wet sand of Parangtritis.
Back and forth, with the water sliding
up to them and away.
...

The mind goes caw, caw, caw, caw,
dark and fast. The orphan heart
cries out, "Save me. Purchase me
as the sun makes the fruit ripe.
...

His heart is like a boat that sets forth alone
on the ocean and goes far out from him,
as Aphrodite proceeds on her pleasure journeys.
He pours the gold down the runnels
...

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
...

Half the women are asleep on the floor
on pieces of cardboard.
One is face down under a blanket
with her feet and ankle bracelet showing.
...

I open the box of my favorite postcards
and turn them over looking for de Chirico
because I remember seeing you standing
facing a wall no wider than a column where
...