Dan Chiasson Poems

Snow up to our waists and coming down still.
There was a field here once, when we began.
...

Everything scatters as the night wears on:
but you, don't scatter, will you?
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How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel
that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.
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It is impossible for me to remember
the cozy room I slept in as a child.
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A minute ago I was a child coughing: having had
too much of everything today, except for air.
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Reality isn't one point in space.
It isn't one moment in time—
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Whitman wrote this, before he started writing poetry.
He was a journalist for years, you know;
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I lack the rigor of a lightning bolt,
the weight of an anchor. I am
...

The tendons flattened and the knot untied.
You could do anything, then, with your hand;
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Find some other reason to sway, forest;
old people get bent over
...