- Litany, with Birdsong and an Antique Quilt
- Roadscape, with a Cricket’s Chirr
- Landscape, with Livestock
- Late-Winter Sunrise
- Triptych for My Twenty-Third Year: Three Views of Self Portrait at 23 (1999) by J. Kirk Richards
- [Imagine yourself newborn]
- Upon hearing Elder B— bear witness that “Satan is real” to a Mormon congregation the second Sunday of 2011
- On Cherubim and a Flaming Sword (2007) by J. Kirk Richards
- There will be no end to purling of those pigeons—
- Litany, with Wings
After Wise Blood (2018) by Page Turner.
lace c. 1897, antique doll arms, rooster feathers,
human hair, antique button, signwriter’s gilding, 2018
Image used with artist’s permission.
After The Road Ahead Series (2010) by J. Kirk Richards.
Images used with artist’s permission.
After Pond at Thompson’s Station (2008) by J. Kirk Richards.
Image used with artist’s permission.
The poem also references lines 1-26 of Paradise Lost by John Milton:
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
After Winter Sunrise, Maury County (2008) by J. Kirk Richards.
Image used with artist’s permission.
Image used with artist’s permission.
This section draws from the first section of “Burnt Norton,” part one of T. S. Eliot’s long poem, The Four Quartets:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
The epigraph for my poem and the lines (from this section of the poem) “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun / Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run” come from Lew Brown and Wladimar Timm’s lyrics to “Beer Barrel Polka” (1939). Here’s the song as performed by The Andrews Sisters:
After Winter Nursing (2003) by J. Kirk Richards
Image used with artist’s permission.
Me reading the poem as originally published:
Image used with artist’s permission.
I’ve borrowed the title “There will be no end to purling of those pigeons—” from John Talbot’s translation of Virgil’s “Eclogue 1.” Talbot’s poem originally appeared as “Eclogue 1: Virgil” in the journal Literary Imagination (vol. 12, no. 1, 2010) and was reprinted as “An Expulsion Eclogue” in Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets (Peculiar Pages, 2011).
From down here, where the pitched cliffs rise,
Pruners at their work will send
Their singing to the skies;
And there will be no end
To purling of those pigeons that you love,
Or, from the elms, the moaning turtle-dove.
After “Easter Wings” (1633) by George Herbert and Figure with Wings V (2008) by J. Kirk Richards
“Easter Wings” appeared in Herbert’s posthumous collection The Temple (1633). The poem was originally formatted sideways on facing pages and is in the tradition of shaped poems that goes back to ancient Greek sources.
Figure with Wings V by J. Kirk Richards
Image used with artist’s permission.