Ruth Stone Poems

Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
...

In the longer view it doesn’t matter.
However, it’s that having lived, it matters.
So that every death breaks you apart.
You find yourself weeping at the door
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Wallace Stevens says,
'A poet looks at the world
as a man looks at a woman.'
...

Once you saw a drove of young pigs
crossing the highway. One of them
pulling his body by the front feet,
the hind legs dragging flat.
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The sensible living
aren't interested in the dead,
unless there is money in it.
So little you can do with them.
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The fat girl next door would give us a nickel
to walk to the old man's store
and get her an ice-cream cone,
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It is so hard to see where it is,
but it is there even in the morning
when the miracle of shapes
assemble and become familiar,
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My daughters are getting on.
They're in over their hips,
over their stretch marks.
Their debts are rising
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A basket of dirty clothes
spills all day long
down the mountain
beating the rocks
...

For me the great truths are laced with hysteria.
How many Einsteins can we tolerate?
I leap into the uncertainty principle.
...