Fervor
Phillips, Carl
Somewhere between
To Be Lit
and To Be
Transfigured,
he’d removed his shirt,
his shoes,
he had opened his pants;
he wore nothing under.
I did what I do–
pretended to be a fallen gate,
its hinges gone, that
soon the snow,
continuing, must hide
most of.
Is this how it will finish?
Is fervor belief’s
only measure? Is there
no saving
what betrays itself?
After which,
I held him
until his body was not
his body,
was a single birch
I’d seen years ago– down, and silvering
in a field,
Indiana.
Sleep, I said. But he
couldn’t sleep;
he said Tell me a story.
There was once
a mockingbird, I told him, It
knew no better:
it would sing.
It sang all night…
CARL PHILLIPS is the author of five books of poems, most recently The Tether (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001). He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Copyright New England Review Winter 2002
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