Sample Poems by Stan Sanvel Rubin
The Century
Beyond the place where everything is forgiven
is the place where men cry and are amazed
at their own crying. A scene like that
isn't easy to witness except in a painting. Remorse like that
is what Kafka kept in his chest, under rib bones
worn thin as lines of type, faithful companion.
Language dries up at a time like that, shrivels,
almost, like spent coals, a thin dust of ash
their only expression.
Under each face now
I see signs of such withering, a web of purple
bruises masking clear flesh, ordinary losses
made iridescent in the light of the moon.
Dark fields, dark fields I have dreamed you
passing through one night into another night.
Where the Sun Was
As if my life mattered, I woke up today
with such energy I didn't understand its source,
and when I walked out among the many dying things
colored for death, I could only stare amazed
at the beauty of brown and orange-brown and yellow
as familiar as skin you've touched many times
suddenly awakened with the power
to seem new even when dying, to twist in the slight
wind under a fading wing of light etched in a chalk sky,
could only wonder at my own forgetfulness,
being the seer at the center of all this, yet unable
to recall it, to hold it in mind as something real
and necessary even as it is passing, as I am passing--
November, November, November everywhere.
At the U.S. Space and Rocket Museum
In Huntsville, you can escape the sun
in the improbable shade of a Stealth fighter,
you can touch a reassembled V-2, cram yourself
into a perfect mock-up of a space capsule,
and, if you're not careful, lose your balance,
crack a knee against a bulkhead, seeing stars,
descend tipsy as a kid to common ground.
Rilke knew space lives inside us like destiny,
like pain. The measure of distance
the hand of a child. The map of love
an internal sky. Here in the shadow
of the predator's wing, while the camera
makes its chemical memory, and you stand
still aiming at me--my love, my stranger--
I am as distant from myself as a newsreel.
I cannot forgive my own heart's wars.