Anthony Weir Poems

We're told that writing was invented here:
lists of weapons, foodstuffs, kings, kinsmen,
laws and penalties.
Here lived the first Man-God, Gilgamesh.
...

Obviously, song came before speech
and moans came before song.
Whales sing refrains and antiphons,
compose sonatas.
...

Farming is more swords
than earth-savaging, earth-exhausting ploughshares:
exile from Eden,
starvation and infection,
...

Miserable wars
if love is not the reason
Miserable wars
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In the absurd
eventuality of re-incarnation
I should be desirous
of returning as a bower-bird
...

In just one respect they tend to deviate.
In other ways they earnestly collaborate,
conform depressingly.
The same is true of dissidents and poets.
...

translation of a famous sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585)
from Sonnets for Hélène

When you are very old, at evening, by the fire,
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On warm, still nights
I hear rocks groan in their sleep.
I am mumbling sadness
unable to love or to weep,
...

Through language we lose
our innocence,
our animal integrity.
Through knowledge
...