Peter Filkins

Peter Filkins Poems

Many years later, while contemplating beauty
as order, he would think of them: gamecocks
sharpening their claws for a scrap, and how
...

Be it a whisper, be it a raspy cough,
whatever sets it off is soon forgotten,
the high faint rumble at first mistaken
for an airplane's passing roar, a gust of wind
...

I

When Hitler married Eva Braun
just days before committing suicide,
the war now lost, the Allies advancing,
...

for James Lasdun

'Topped, dropped & chipped 2 dead white birch trees'
reads the bill arriving one week later.
The damage? 'Labor & Equipment - $250,'
...

Daniel Pearl (1963-2002)

My father was a Jew, my mother was a Jew,
and yet just what that means for me
I'm not really sure, are you?
...

Outside my window, a man running.
Though it's mid-winter, ten above,
he stays the course, determined
...

Mata Hari, for the first time since she had been arrested, began to see the futility
of the efforts to save her.... People whom she knew innocently had become dangerous
companions; conversations which were private and intimate had become acts
...

Blue tilted pupil
staring at heaven,
a child's small hand
can set you spinning.
...

for Susan

Dawn's tender light
shatters to a blast
of shotguns on the lake,
...

Was it Kiki or Heinz with whom we hitched
that ride from Hamburg to Berlin
twenty years ago, the sun setting across
the barren expanse of the Prussian march
...

Peter Filkins Biography

Peter Filkins is an American poet and literary translator. Filkins graduated from Williams College with a Bachelor of Arts and from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts degree.)

The Best Poem Of Peter Filkins

Augustine's vision

Many years later, while contemplating beauty
as order, he would think of them: gamecocks
sharpening their claws for a scrap, and how
he simply had to watch them while on his way
to be baptized and confess, accept the glory
of God in all things, himself a creature of sin.

As he stood watching, he knew he courted error,
the beauty of a thing in and of itself
not always the same as God's invisible plan,
the gamecocks and their darting, skillful parries,
the exultant crowing, bodies taut with power,
soon whipping the crowd into a drunken frenzy.

'For what horizon do eyes of love not scan,
hoping for a hint of reason's beautiful scheme,'
he later wrote, thinking of colorful birds
pitched in battle, pure animal action
without mind - limp wings and carriage, a croak
gone awry, all of it fitting nature's set way.

Though this was years before he lay on his deathbed,
Hippo surrounded, the Vandal hordes approaching,
as Augustine lamented his sins, thinking of gamecocks,
their beaks and talons bloodied, no doubt convinced
a higher mind worked through them, ordering all things,
as the saint continued weeping inside his narrow cell.

Peter Filkins Comments

warren 19 September 2018

peter filkins is a transphobe

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