Michael Hofmann Poems

It's all right
Unless you're either lonely or under attack.
That strange effortful
...

Nothing required an account of me
And still I didn't give one.
...

Another one of those Pyrrhic experiences. Call it
an expyrrhience. A day at Lords, mostly rain,
one of those long-drawn-out draws so perplexing to Americans.
...

In that aftertime
I wasn't writing. I never wrote,
I didn't know what the aftertime was for.
I felt little, collected nothing.
...

For Hai-Dang Phan

I have no doubt where they will go. They walk
the one life offered from the many chosen.
 — Robert Lowell
...

Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
— Andrew Marvell
...