Scott Cairns Poems

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
...

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

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 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
...

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,
...