The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 6/1/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Big Doors

I have seen with my own eyes doors so massive
that two men would have been required
to push open just one of them.
Bronze, grating over stone sills, or made of wood
from trees now nearly extinct.

Many things never to be seen again!
The fury of cavalry attacking at full gallop.
Little clouds of steam rising
from horse droppings
on most of the world’s streets once.

Rooms amber with lamplight
perched above those streets.
Pilgrimage routes smoky with torchlight
from barony to principality through forests
that stood as a dark uncut authority.

A story that begins “Once upon a time.”
Messengers, brigands, heralds
in a world unmapped from village to village.
Legends and dark misinformation,
graveyards crowded with ghosts.

And when the rider from that story at last arrives,
gates open at midnight to receive him.
Two men, two men we will never know,
lean into the effort of
pushing open each big door.

Richard Tillinghast

****************



Richard Tillinghast is the author of eight books of poetry and three books of non-fiction. His first poetry collection was Sleep Watch, 1969. His first collection was Sleep Watch, 1969. At the time James Dickey called its author “the best poet of the younger generation, and deserving of more recognition than most of the poets in the older generation: that is, mine and the one beyond it.” Sleep Watch was followed by The Knife and Other Poems in 1980, Sewanee in Ruins in 1981, and Our Flag Was Still There in 1984. Two books of poems from the 1990s include The Stonecutter’s Hand, David R. Godine, 1995, and Today in the Café Trieste, 1997, new and selected poems issued by Salmon Publishing in Ireland.

****************

:hi:

RL

[RetroLounge]

1. kick

hello?

:kick:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. hey there

love it. Medieval.

[RetroLounge]

3. hey!

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. Is this guy in Europe?

Feel free to send me to Google. I just thought you might know more.

[RetroLounge]

5. I met him this weekend in Michigan

He lives part of the year in Ireland, teaches in Michigan too.

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. cool.