Robert Hass's first book in ten years, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, will go on sale this October.
Here's one of the shorter poems near the beginning of the collection:
"Winged and Acid Dark"
A sentence with "dappled shadow" in it. Something not sayable spurting from the morning silence, secret as a thrush. The other man, the officer, who brought onions and wine and sacks of flour, the major with the swollen knee, wanted intelligent conversation afterward. Having no choice, she provided that, too. Potsdamerplatz, May 1945. When the first one was through he pried her mouth open. BashÅ told Rensetsu to avoid sensational materials. If the horror of the world were the truth of the world, he said, there would be no one to say it and no one to say it to. I think he recommended describing the slightly frenzied swarming of insects near a waterfall. Pried her mouth open and spit in it.We pass these things on, probably, because we are what we can imagine. Something not sayable in the morning silence. The mind hungering after likenesses. "Tender sky," etc., curves the swallows trace in air.
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