The Alma Elegies

My next book, The Alma Elegies, will be out from Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2007. I've always felt close to the Spanish and German poets, especially Lorca, Jimenez and Rilke. They're all mentioned in this poem from the Elegies called The White House. Look for some more previews from the book over the next while.

THE WHITE HOUSE

I remember sitting in the house
with one light only, the screen door
open to the sounds of crickets
rising through the night fields.

The grass slow;
a few leaves fell, red
and gold
among the purple asters.

It was a solitude
I learned to love, a table
I returned to
again and again,

carrying a small cargo
of words that were true.
The brook sound moved
through the night;

I no longer heard
the clock ticking
on the white wall.
I was carried

on an inner raft
lashed together
by my own longing
and loss.

And all through
the autumn nights
I was looking
for shore,

the gong
of the light buoy
sounding the way
of the deeper current

where Rilke sat
in his aloneness,
Lorca
with his hat

and wooden sword,
Jimenez by the shore,
skipping black stones
across the water,

ripples and words gone out
in such a way
that they freshened
and startled the world.

(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)