Knopf Doubleday, Belletristik, Curves and Angles (Englisch, Brad Leithauser, 2008)

NOT LUNAR EXACTLY (Detroit, 1948) New, and entirely new to the neighborhoodÉ One August day, it came to their own street: the Nutleys brought home a television! Nights now, the neighbors began to meet more often than before, out walking, walking past the Nutleys, who, on display behind their picture window, sat frozen in their chairs, watching their television, which lay off to the side, just out of view, so you couldn’ t make out what it was they were watching but only them watching, the four Nutleys, in a blue glow that was lunar but not lunar exactly. That was the summer we all watched the Nutleys– no, we all watched “ The Nutleys,” which was the one great show of the summer, it ran for weeks, with its four silent stars behind glass, until nights went cold and damp and we turned to our cars if we ventured out after dark, and then– three in a row– the Daleys, the Floods, the Markses took the plunge, they brought home the glow, and the Nutleys, suddenly, belonged to a new community. FROM HERE TO THERE There are those great winds on a tear Over the Great Plains, Bending the grasses all the way Down to the roots And the grasses revealing A gracefulness in the wind’ s fury You would not otherwise Have suspected there. And there’ s the wind off the sea Roiling the thin crowns of the great Douglas firs on the cragged Oregon coast, uprooting Choruses of outraged cries, As if the trees were unused To bending, who can weather Such storms for a century. And– somewhere between those places, Needing a break– we climb out stiff From our endless drive to stand, dwindled, On a ridge, holding hands, In what are foothills only because The neighboring mountains are So much taller, and there are the breezes, Contrarily pulled, awakening our faces. SON Memory buries its own, And of what now forever must be The longest day of his life What mostly remained was a blur Under too-bright lights– so he Could scarcely tell if the things Sharpest in his mind were Nothing but fantasies, sewn Afterwards, out of grief, And guilt’ s imaginings. Yet it seemed memory called up (After the interminable birth, As his finger stroked the arm Of a child who would not last Even one whole day And all of its time on earth Ministered to by vast Machines that couldn’ t mend the harm In a single transcription slip In reams of DNA) A look so haunted, so Haunting, he would not confess (Not even later, to his wife) How it stayed with him, on him: the slow Flicker in a watery eye, The mute call– through all The exhausted hopefulness The condemned come to know In the end– from animal to animal, Imploring, Please save my life. NORTH-LOOKING ROOM In a seldom-entered attic you force a balky door, disclosing a room made brilliant by an orange tree whose branches bear no fruit but maple leaves We’ re in New England, after all. Though rippling foliage fills the pane, the flush that tints the wall will last a week or two, no more. * And this conception, if consoling, of a high, untenanted room lit solely by a tree houses as well– at least for those who’ d sidestep round the fear that in the give-and-take of calls to answer, calls to make, we lose the light most dim, most clear– a reprimand no breeze can shake. OVER LABRADOR When miles of perfect whiteness Gave way to a whiteness below (Snowed-under hills of a cloudlike brightness Under cloudbanks heaped like snow), By either light How fulfilling to contemplate Domains so evenly claimworthy– Unpeopled, complete.