Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris Poems

Pierre Joris Biography

Pierre Joris, (born July 14, 1946) is a Luxembourg-American poet, translator, anthologist and essayist. Joris was born in Strasbourg, France on July 14, 1946 and raised in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, is a poet, translator, anthologist and essayist. He left Luxembourg at nineteen and since then has lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa and France. In 1987, he returned to the U.S., first to upstate New York and then to the San Diego area as visiting poet & scholar at University of California, San Diego. In 1992, he returned to New York State and taught in the Department of English at University at Albany until 2013.)

The Best Poem Of Pierre Joris

Altars Of Light

If the light is the soul
then soul is what's
all around me.

It is you,
it is around you too,
it is you.

The darkness is inside me,
the opaqueness of organs folded
upon organs--

to make light in the house of
the body--
thus to bring the
outside in,
the impossible job.

And the only place to become
the skin
the border, the inbetween, where
dark meets light, where I meets
you.

In the house of world the
many darknesses are surrounded
by light.

To see the one, we need
the other / it cuts both ways

light on light is blind
dark on dark is blind

light through dark is not

dark through light is movement
dark through light becomes,
is becoming,
to move through
light is becoming,

is all
we can know.

Pierre Joris Comments