MICHAEL PALMER

 

Transit

(after Wellington)

 
God’s eye 
in a paua shell 
plucked weeks back 
from the violent tides 
 
of Breaker Bay, 
resting now be- 
tween Ha Jin’s 
War Trash 
 
and Creeley’s On 
Earth, his last, 
on a simple shelf. 
We’ve come 
 
to the old 
echoes again, 
swallowed songs, 
tongues of cloud and wind. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Palmer lives in San Francisco. His most recent book of poetry is Company of Moths (New Directions, 2005). In the spring of 2007, a chapbook, The Counter-Sky(with translations by Koichiro Yamauchi), was published by Meltemia Press of Japan, to coincide with the Tokyo Poetry and Dance Festival. His selected essays, Active Boundaries, recently appeared from New Directions.

‘Transit’ results from his visit to New Zealand in May of 2008, in particular a brief, though profoundly enjoyable and informing, residency at Victoria University in Wellington.

 

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