What We Think We Can’t Give Up
They built this town hall to last.
It did, longer than what it was meant to
house. From its stone walls,
an elaborate bowling green behind,
you can see across the Bandon
far enough to make out the ruins
of James Fort. Little of what we think
will protect us does. The dead,
we might think, have learned to give up
what we think we can’t,
that what’s left after we’ve abandoned
everything is all that matters.
Clawing at ruins to wear them down, time
isn’t what concerns the dead.
They want us to see what they know.
Being dead, whatever they do
they do in vain. The living can’t
know anything the dead want for them.
Beyond Language
Distant hills blur with rain, the edge of
the sky indefinite. Clarity
might come in the form of remembering
a woman, naked & soaking, in a tub,
in water as green as the Bandon
on a day when the sun turns cottages
cluttering the hills into an expression
beyond language. What clarifies anything
isn’t time or its passing,
but time passed in one place,
a history personal enough to refine
both the face & the indefinite heart.
Looking Across the Bandon to the Ruins of James Fort
Landscape’s not a thing we have it in us
to understand, our ruins
merely scars on the surface of what it is
that remains. Despite everything
we think ours, nothing we possess
comes close to the longevity of landscape.
Listening to the Bandon
Hulls groan against wharfs, keeping time
with music the Bandon’s been
playing so long our lyrics,
no matter how sincere the throats
that give them voice, can’t
hope to match it note for note. To listen
to just the briefest performance
is a privilege. If we listen
as well as we can, we might hear
enough of the Bandon’s music
to keep us dancing, with lovers, longer
than we ever dared think possible.
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George Looney’s recent books include The Visibility of Things Long Submerged which won the BOA Editions Short Fiction Award, The Acrobatic Company of the Invisible which won The Cider Press Review Editors’ Poetry Prize, and The Itinerate Circus: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020. He is the founder of the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Penn State Erie, editor of Lake Effect, translation editor of Mid-American Review, and co-founder of the original Chautauqua Writers’ Festival.