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Leonard Schwartz
 
    Hudson Curve 
 
 

Silence defects the grove
and the grove goes silent.
 
For fear of silence
all trees are slaughtered.
 
Then mingle the sea gulls
and the crows
 
As is only possible on a thin slip
of waterfront and grass.
 
And if I saw a hummingbird
it was no illusion.
 
And the red light associated with Mars
whose locus remains the intellect's shine,
 
The thinking part of the twinkle.
Nowhere shows the other god's name
 
But the hummingbird
must go somewhere to drink
 

And silence perches on the border
between idea and the next strata
 
Saws at work
trimming the sinecure.
 
Hearing thunder, sought to include
unsuspected rose and Norwegian maple
 
Migration of forms
reverentially tended
 
Talents of thatch
to which Tu Fu retired.

No going back save for the river,
reversing its current routinely.
 
Circle Line they call the boat
brings the visitors
 
Around Manhattan Isle,
Circle Line.
 
 
 

 
Leonard Schwartz's two most recent books are Words Before The Articulate: New And Selected Poems (Talisman House) and A Flicker At The Edge Of Things: Essays On Poetics (Spuyten Duyvil). He edits a section on translation for the web journal The Transcendental Friend (see Jacket's literary links page). This past summer, he taught a poetry seminar at Lacoste School of the Arts in Provence, France.
 

 
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