Lake Surface Full of Clouds, and: Quiet, and: Two Robins in Summer

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Lake Surface Full of Clouds, and: Quiet, and: Two Robins in Summer Joseph Duemer Note from the Editors: It is with sadness that we report the passing away of Joseph Duemer, at the age of 66, on June 27, 2017. Joe served as Poetry Editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal for twenty years, from 1990 to 2010. He was Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Clarkson University, where he had taught courses in creative writing, literature, popular music, and Buddhism. He published numerous books of poetry, including The Light of Common Day, Customs, Static, and Magical Thinking, and coedited Dog Music: Poetry about Dogs. His poems and criticism appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals. His latest volume of poetry, which he was preparing for publication under the title River with Birds, contains several poems that testify to Stevens’s inspiration on him. We have decided to start our usual selection of poems by reproducing three of these works in celebration of Joe’s poetic career and his longtime service to the Journal. We express our sincere condolences to Joe’s wife, Carole Mathey, and thank her for granting permission to publish the following poems. Lake Surface Full of Clouds In this July evening in the mountains the lake lies within its stone perimeter & light presses against its surface. Wind shapes it & clouds print their exact images on the water, moving. The scent of jack pine fills the air, & the cry of a phoebe, two long notes repeated: thing & song [End Page 278] in their wild fullness full. The world is plainspoken; full of evening light, it is there before me. I lack the perfect mind of an animal, such that I can see myself seeing this. I know myself. I have the stupid human trick of language & a bright penny in my pocket. The tyrant kingbird swerves kit-kit-kit out over the lake’s edge & glances down so that one imagines the lake bottom as conceived from flight. The geography of the lakebed flickers with bronze coins consisting of light & the teal transparency of old glass, the blue iridescence of a trout’s fin in the sunlit shallows swept by shadows. But there is no book of the world—not the night sky’s constellations nor another’s body that we touch with our open hands—neither book nor mirror. We must content ourselves in ourselves in our desolation with the print of a mink’s forepaws on brown sand— left there when [End Page 279] he bent to lick a few streaks of light from the tensed lake. Note: Previously published in American Literary Review; “Lake Surface Full of Clouds” was the winner of the journal’s annual award for best poem in 2012. Quiet “One grows used to the weather.” —Stevens, “The American Sublime” I have always lived here without knowing anything much about anything much, except this slanting light & mild weather, mostly sunny & lulling me to sleep I now see that the light on the bright island is not as I had thought, not without precedent. It has alwaysbeen an exile’slight, trembling. Quiet. Quiet. My phonemes obey the island’s laws of limited motion— short & clear & as careful as needles scoring birdsong on precise devices. Or they will buzz slightly & blur [End Page 280] into the damaged music of language. I have listened but for too long without attention. It has alwaysbeen an exile’slight, trembling. Quiet. Quiet. Light shifts, singing only empty space. A flicker of ultraviolet shivers in the night sky. It is as dry as these dry stalks & shadows of dry stalks askew in soil long given over to waiting—some fleck of water glinting on the faucet’s lip. That will be enough, or almost enough. Light shifts . . . It has alwaysbeen an exile’s light, tense & trembling. Quiet. Quiet. . . . a sharp breeze shifts direction, adjusting leaves & stirring unbroken branches. Waking, the weather veers predictably enough toward beauty (which must be acknowledged) & loneliness (now devoid of the sublime) but I drift in & out of [End Page 281] shadows cast by stately cumulus. Here I am. It has alwaysbeen an exile’slight, trembling. Quiet. Quiet...