Table of Contents
The Calling of the Elect to Heaven
The Dead Go Down to the Stygian Waters
Waking Hungover in a Field, 1979
Also by Eric Pankey The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984–2008 Reliquaries Oracle Figures Cenotaph The Late Romances Apocrypha Heartwood For the New Year
for Clare and Rob
There ain’t no dark till something shines
— Townes Van Zandt
I.
The Sacrifice
Gradually, the blood drains: A thousand words never meant for scripture. Still hunkered on the mountain ridge, The moon: a saline ghost, a mouth Opened around a hollow syllable. When we move toward the sacrifice, God lifts as a swarm — a body of flies — As sated as God ever is.
A Bird Loose in the House
The frame — a grid — contrives a theater, A shadow-play alive on a curtain alive with wind. Call the bird The arbitrary inventoried in its variety, Or
