Glenn Bach

 

     from Atlas Peripatetic

181


Pretend the world is a garden.

Turn away from the woes.

Brush up against branch or shrub,
against pole, against the droop
of dry palm fronds,
vegetation from properties
spilling into the corridor
of the sidewalk.

Walk in a landscape in defense of the land,
a resonance and a cultural weight,
these walks that are all trespasses
through the beauty of the body of the landscape,
a spiritual thing, an almost religion
among landowners and landless,
the commons and the footpaths,
thin ribbons of public land laid down
upon vast swaths of private,
corollaries of the glorious open gardens,
towns to cities, economic to psychic,
the war of Epping Forest.

Reclaim the path,
actus back into iter,
back into deer trace,
into small pockets of clearing.


335


     hammering and the like

         consisting of a head

             of steel or iron

         fixed crosswise

             to a handle


which in form or action

that part which strikes

    upon, smites or shatters,

    beats with heavy blows,


which to form

    or forge, to shape,

    to labor hard, spike,

        as a cannon

 

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