Two poems by faculty member Marianne Boruch

NPS photo by Emily Brouwer

Faculty Member Marianne Boruch has published two poems: “I Saw A House, A Field” in The New Yorker and “Pieces on the Ground” in Poetry.

I Saw A House, A Field 

Most of the rooms muted by cold,
and the furniture there
with its human chill under vast drapes
of plastic for the season—

Because eventually we are
an austerity, walking room to room
enamored and saddened, all the crazy variations
of bed and table, clocks,
books on a shelf, foreign harbors etched
some yesterday, framed for a wall.
And the effrontery of windows assuming
how lovely out, a certainty
of lawn and woods, distance on a road, voices
that in summer drift up and move away.

[…continue reading “I Saw A House, A Field” in The New Yorker]

Pieces on the Ground

I gave up the pencil, the walk in woods, the fog
     at dawn, a keyhole I lost an eye to.

And the habit of early, of acorn into oak—
      bent   tangled   choked because of ache or greed,
      or lousy light deemed it so.

So what. Give up that so what.

O fellow addicts of the arch and the tragic, give up
     the thousand-pound if and when too.
     Give up whatever made the bed or unmade it.

[…continue reading “Pieces on the Ground” in Poetry]