Thread: Mason in TLS
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Unread 08-03-2004, 07:37 AM
David Mason David Mason is offline
Honorary Poet Lariat
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Colorado
Posts: 1,444
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I haven't received my copy of the TLS yet either, but I'll type the poem in here:

The Bay of Writing

"And I with only a reed in my hands."
-George Seferis

The reed, dried and cut, could make a pan-pipe
on an idle day. I say the word again,
kalamus, that early pen, from breezy
leaf to leaves of nervy writing--Sappho,
Archilochos, their fingering lines,
a silent music till our voices find it.

In retrospect I walk among those trees,
polled mulberries no longer home to silkworms,
the crone-like olives, upright cypresses
above the hammered metal of the bay
called Kalamitsi. There the lazy hours
watching the ant roads through the summer straw

taught me the frantic diligence of mind,
the way it ferries breadcrumbs and small seeds
fast fast to its storehouse in reedy shade.
The way the hand rests on an open book
I've disappeared into, takes up a pen
and traces letters in a trail of words.

Kalamus, Kalamitsi, bay of reeds,
music of everything I have not written.

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