VISIONS OF by Noelle Kocot

Exultant limit, do we now testify to the day

Crowned with wounds, with complete design?

Sing!  The planet spins on the darkness opening,

And sometimes, we wander along our way.  To

 

Tell someone is not enough—what we’ve seen! The

Rings of filth around the earth, the scorched and

Freezing animals!  Irony is a scarf, but wisdom

Is unpossessed.  If I had some sketching paper,

 

I’d put it to you plainly—there, there it is!  The

White glove begins to unravel.  How will I remember

You?  Beyond memory, we’re lost, turning hollow.

The ragged assertion of the light that’s been dealt,

 

The arguments in the compaction of these experiences,

They unfold back into speech, thoroughly inaccurate.

I just keep on driving, into the lunar haze, all appetite

And May rains.  Time is short, equipoise is tempted.

 

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I am highly aware of the destruction of our planet, and it is of first and foremost concern to me as a human being.  I am troubled by visions of this planet dying, and I want to do everything I can to stop the destruction.  Writing poetry that might heighten people’s awareness is one way that I try to do it.

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Noelle is the author of six books of poems, most recently Soul in Space (Wave Books, 2013), a discography called Damon’s Room (Wave, 2010) and a translation of the French poet Tristan Corbiere, (Wave 2011).  She has received numerous awards for her work, including those from The Lannan Literary Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, The National Endowment for the Arts, The American Poetry Review, and The Fund for Poetry.  Her work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry 2001, 2012 and 2013 and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology.  She was born and raised in Brooklyn, and lives in New Jersey.