three poems

Trustees of Boston University

Three PoemsAuthor(s): Brett FosterSource: Arion, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Winter 2013), pp. 91-96Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/arion.20.3.0091 .

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Three Poems

BRETT FOSTER

Poet of the People

If someone’s looking for me, they’ll find meworking at my verses at this or that tablein the public library’s back right corner.

I’m still trying to make them durable enoughto be heard among the snoring and murmuringof the assembled homeless regulars here.

We’ve become used to passing our time together.We thoughtfully make room for one another.I have much to learn. That much remains clear.

The labors I busy myself with are obscurebut noble: scanning centuries for flashesof ghostly wisdom, struggling to lift the bulk

as in a grain elevator, or sometimes simplymarveling at the Loeb on the table, as if just for meall of Atlantis had surfaced from deep seas.

arion 20.3 winter 2013



Inscription on the Ruined Temple

What did this age produce?Diverting fancies that were useless,new interfaces that abusedour hours (which Dr. Johnson musedwere priceless) and soured us.Explanations were the most confusing.

What did the age encourage?Brightly accented sadness, wagesnot of single but multiple hemorrhaging.It made us build a Faraday cage,mainly, to keep out the sewage.And to be alone with our rage.

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Our Nostos

So long ago (he says)those newlywed daysof sex and budgets,

living off family’s nuptial gifts whilewe, uplifted, spent only

our days workingin bookshops, long hoursin toy stores. Spent

those first winternights, on Beacon Street, in Boston, with leaden,

love-tired limbslovely and unconcernedwith the self, at last,

at rest on the futon bed,un-self-conscious,underneath the wedding

gift of Ralph Lauren’splaid comforter,and beneath our innocent

heads, the plaid shamsI’d never heard of. That bedwas like an island

Brett Foster 93



orienting the one room, oasisto which the single flesh

nightly returned,around which the studioapartment spun,

not unlike in central respects the old,olive-tree anchored,

rooted bed of Penelopeand Odysseus, in theirearlier, briefly

royal days. There, they retired nightly for rest shared,telling a day’s stories.

Those were the daysbefore the uproarand the setting sail

and long, besetting war,and afterward, the indefensiblydelayed return,

increasingly unexpected,there to the shoreof that sea-steeped island.

How foolish, how truly silly he was! Unaware

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or indifferent to miles,various coasts ahead,he had no idea

that the brooch would soonbe long lost, sunkin the sea or bottom

of the harbor.May every husband’s laborbe seen for the little

thing it is,worthlessly distractingor ever on the horizon,

while the shroud is wovenor unraveled as the candle burns down.

By the time it happened,the pair had begun

to take the shapeof their crooked elders,grey in their years,

heavy with the yearsbetween them,lost, awaiting

a coming mistto move across themlike the gentlest of hands.

Brett Foster 95



In that tiny roomnear Kenmore Squarewe too were living

through an early historywe would never graspagain, never again.

Broke, learning the routesto the T, we took our ownyoung, lusty royalty

so seriously, queenand king of each other’sbodies, and they were

sweeter gifts by far,dearer to usthan all the horses,

silver basins, lampstands,all the assembled treasuresof Pylos, Sparta, Phaeacia.

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three poems

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