Watching the Spring Festival Quotes

“The Old Man at the Wheel

Measured against the immeasurable
universe, no word you have spoken

brought light. Brought
light to what, as a child, you thought

too dark to be survived. By exorcism
you survived. By submission, then making.

You let all the parts of that thing you would
cut out of you enter your poem because

enacting there all its parts allowed you
the illusion you could cut it from your soul.

Dilemmas of choice given what cannot
change alone roused you to words.

As you grip the things that were young when
you were young, they crumble in your hand.

Now you must drive west, which in November
means driving directly into the sun.”
― Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems

“The law is that you
must live

in the house you have built.

The law is absurd: it is
written down nowhere.

You are uncertain what crime

is, though each life writhing to
elude what it has made

feels like punishment.”
― Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems

“The stratagems by which briefly you
ameliorated, even seemingly

untwisted what still twists within you —

you loved their taste and lay there
on your side

nursing like a puppy.”
― Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems

“Though the body is its
genesis, a poem is the vision of a process

Out of ceaseless motion in edgeless space

Carved in space, vision your poor eye's single
armor against winter spring summer fall”
― Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems