Mark Statman

grief and magic

my wandering eyes
wandering side shows
sliding into calling
morning doves
then the dance
danced too quickly
spell cast by mourning
clothes changing light
we dress in twilight
appear in each other’s
dreams the century
has no past no future
without ruins no
revival carried
on winds tombstones
parking lots feather
balloons or a house
for a home it’s
where we'll live in
the centuries to
come our
footprints amber
and ashes
tea tins under tree
roots and out to
sea there's no place
like the voyage the
journey these are
boat and train
a bus ride at night
upstate New
York mountains
or Oaxaca south
pilgrims vagabonds
saints sages calls
to carry our
burdens set down
the trees laced spiders
their webs the oxen
sleep there’s music
the wind the straw
the dance of
straw in the fields

blessing

derive the
curses derive
away derive
lizards snakes as
they derive and
drive the furies
inhabiting body
and mind
action and
language they
fill the spaces
between past
and future profane
sacred this
present is lasting
too long the
blessings take
all day
we’ll go on
ratatat ratatat the
rain coming
over houses
over fields
those bulls
in those fields
locking horns

the poem as agent of change

whitewashed skies by
clouds whitewashed and
love fits loosely the day
night loosely fit
the travel on
worn down roads
image passion no
story line Guadalupe
is gone the virgin
gone you know
her by the starlit
robes by starlight worn
have we thought this
through enough logic
of appearance fled
dynamo the law
a flawed hope
I don't always look
in the mirror but
when I do I
want to like what
I see cave
drawings millennia
passing men are
penises women
breasts mountain
goat horns curve
like those mountain ranges
against those saintly plains
it wraps up
then fleetly dissolves
time signatures of
replacement of
redemptions renewal
and release I
know I want to
sing love beauty
quiet intentional vigils
on the route of wisdom
our detours
become flesh a
yellow finch flashes the
no account white sky
the finch yellow a
flame a star then
comes another two
finches now an old
bare tree they
hover over love
like a poem its desire

Mark Statman has written fourteen books. Among them are the recent poetry collections Hechizo (Lavender Ink, 2022), and Exile Home (Lavender Ink, 2019). Volverse/Volver is forthcoming from Lavender Ink in 2025). Grove Press published his translation of Federico García Lorca's Poet in New York (2008). Statman’s poetry, essays, and translations can be found in numerous anthologies. A recipient of awards from the NEA and the National Writers Project, he is Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, and lives in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca and Oaxaca de Juárez, MX. He is a dual national of Mexico and the United States.