Scott Cairns

After Stevens
It was when he said expansively There is
no such thing as the truth that his thick thumbs
thickened and his lips, purple as grapes,
...

Agion Oros, 2006
The air is cool and is right thick with birdsong
as our bleary crew files out, of a sudden
disinterred from three sepulchral hours of prayer
...

προσέλθετε
For near is where you'll meet what you have wandered
far to find. And near is where you'll very likely see
how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon
...

This morning the world's white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
...

You'll need a corpse, your own or someone else's.
You'll need a certain distance; the less you care about
your corpse the better. Light should be
unforgiving, so as to lend a literal
...

—Katounakia, 2007
The cave itself is pleasantly austere,
with little clutter—nothing save
a narrow slab, a threadbare woolen wrap,
...

What I notice first within
this rough scene fixed
in memory is the rare
quality of its lightning, as if
...

Each morning we begin again. My wife
wakes me with a shove, and condescends to try
her sorry Deutsch with me; she's chewing mud.
God, she's dumb. I tell her so, but mostly
...

A psalm of Isaak, amid uncommon darkness
O Being both far distant and most near,
O Lover embracing all unlovable, O Tender
Tether binding us together, and binding, yea
...

1

A psalm of Isaak, accompanied by Jew's harp.

O God Belovéd if obliquely so,
dimly apprehended in the midst
...

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
—Milosz
And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.
So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.
...

A little loam and topsoil
is a lot.
—Heather McHugh
A vacant lot, maybe, but even such lit vacancy
as interstate motels announce can look, well, pretty
...

Magdalen's Epistle
Of Love's discrete occasions, we
observe sufficient catalogue,
a likely-sounding lexicon
...

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze
of these skeletal figures affects
the disposition of those grinning candies
one finds in Mexico, say, at the start of November,
...

Your petitions—though they continue to bear
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties—despite their constant,
...

He did not fall then, blind upon a road,
nor did his lifelong palsy disappear.
He heard no voice, save the familiar,
...

For A.B.
She said God. He seems to be there
when I call on Him but calling
has been difficult too. Painful.
...

You could almost think the word synonymous
with mind, given our so far narrow
history, and the excessive esteem
...