George Oppen

consciousness

in itself
...

‘out of poverty
to begin

again' impoverished
...

that smoke
would remain

the forever
...

‘Whether, as the intensity of seeing increases, one’s distance from Them, the people, does not also increase’
...

In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down—
That they are there!
...

1

Likely as not a ruined head gasket
Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft
...

I remember a square of New York’s Hudson River glinting between warehouses.
Difficult to approach the water below the pier
...

night—sky bird’s world
to know to know in my life to know
...

Town, a town,
But location
Over which the sun as it comes to it;
Which cools, houses and lamp-posts, ...
...

The sea and a crescent strip of beach
Show between the service station and a deserted shack
...

I dreamed myself of their people, I am of their people,
I thought they watched me that I watched them
that they
...

This Earth the king said
Looking at the ground;
This England. But we drive
A Sunday paradise
...

The householder issuing to the street
Is adrift a moment in that ice stiff
Exterior. ‘Peninsula
...

Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
...

Her arms around me—child—
Around my head, hugging with her whole arms,
Whole arms as if I were a loved and native rock,
The apple in her hand—her apple and her father,
...