Sarah Arvio’s books include Visits from the Seventh; Sono: cantos; and night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis (all from Alfred A. Knopf). Arvio has won the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as Arvio has won the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and NEA fellowships. For many years a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland, she now lives in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay.
Book Excerpt: night thoughts
three vases
the three glass vases standing in the hall
in a last ray of summer evening light
each of the vases holding three roses
drowning underwater the three roses
yellowrose pinkrose & also bluerose
down in the water their fullpetal heads
that flow a little like little girls’ hair
in the dark hall in a last ray of light
we were three little girls is that the three
I was born third on the third of a month
on the wallpaper were three old roses
over & over the same old roses
the dreamdrowning flowinghair roses
& in the dream a ray of evening light
corner
I meet my love it’s not night & not day
at a table not indoors or outdoors
the sky is a ceiling or the ceiling sky
all in purple silver there is no wind
he says he bought a house on the corner
for us for our life bought us a house
I look & look there is no corner
the houses are a seamless silver row
purple & silver & deepforest green
it opens & shuts like a paper fan
as for me I haven’t got a corner
he’s leaving me now to sleep on a slope
his corner is on a slippery slope
all around there are forests & forests
rock
you can sleep on a rock my mother says
standing beside a flatfaced rock is that
the rock I can sleep on is that the rock
she’s tall & flatfaced standing by the rock
with some light passing around her body
& marking the trees in the winter woods
I know I feel stricken & desperate
though there are no feelings inside the dream
I know because I would feel this in life
if she told me I could sleep on a rock
a hard place to sleep a rock it could hurt
it could hurt for days & maybe for years
lying on that rock & bruising myself
for I slept on the rock & I was hurt
crying
I love girls crying on station platforms
this is not a dream this is the truth
they are crying over their broken thoughts
crying over the night thoughts & the day thoughts
those are the ones they are crying over
I cry too seeing them cry & seeing
me in my life standing on the platform
crying out my eyes & down my young face
my youngold crybaby face crying out
without a sound on the station platform
or maybe with a caughtup breath & no more
though my chest goes updown as I cry in
crying over & over on platforms
wherever I am in the crying world
Excerpted from night thoughts by Sarah Arvio. Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Arvio. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Arvio will read from night thoughts at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 17, 2014, at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Tagged: Poetry
