Ruth Stone Poems

Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will be all Catskills with brand
...

Here is not exactly here
because it passed by there
two seconds ago;
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The shock comes slowly
as an afterthought.
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In ’29 before the dust storms
sandblasted Indianapolis,
we believed in the milk company.
Milk came in glass bottles.
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To you born into violence,
the wars of the red ant are nothing;
you, in the heart of the eruption.
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Writing poems about writing poems
is like rolling bales of hay in Texas.
Nothing but the horizon to stop you.
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Wallace Stevens says,
'A poet looks at the world
as a man looks at a woman.'
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If you had a lot of money
(by some coincidence
you’re at the Nassau Inn in Princeton
getting a whiff of class)
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I wore a large brim hat
like the women in the ads.
How thin I was: such skin.
Yes. It was Indianapolis;
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Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
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