Jacket 3 - Tom Clark

Another Obscure Reverie

Kitties came and went all night long
                                        2:30 — 5:30 a. m.
as in a curious furry nightmare
moth fluttering around the room in the dark
way too late
              for the radiant world... or is it?

That’s the sphere of the lux and
                                        the lumen, spurred
at your own risk —
the dark and strange, or luminous
                                and unlucky

Little Hymn to Athene

This morning           post storm
                                            sky
the world got a good wash     now
                            the sea green
depths conceal a cold and clean
heaven         that by remaining

                YOUR ZONE

(thus hidden)       mimics
        your austerity flags
            coming out of the bath

shivering
before your epheboi

me a dim votary (burnt out bulb)
                    standing under
the cold shower of your cosmic aspect

You can read a review by Dale Smith of Tom Clark’s latest book, White Thought, in Jacket # 4

For ten years in the sixties and seventies Tom Clark served as poetry editor of the Paris Review. He is a painter and teacher of writing, on the Core Faculty in Poetics at New College of California. Tom Clark lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and daughter.

Tom Clark

Two poems

Another Obscure Reverie

Little Hymn to Athene