Augury. Eric Pankey

REMOTE SENSING

      27  SPECULATION ON THE WEIGHT OF YESTERDAY

      28  NOON OUTSIDE THE CITY WALL

      29  ARS POETICA

      30  SPECULATION ON THE ABSENT GOD

      31  THE LITTLE VILLAGE

      32  CREATION MYTH

      33  INTELLIGENCE

      34  AT THE END OF THE LAST GLACIAL PERIOD

      35  HIGH PASTURE

      36  BURNT OFFERING

      37  VESPERS

      38  SPECULATION ON THE VOLCANO

      39  PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPH

      40  ANOTHER TIME

      41  SPECULATION ON INVISIBILITY

      42  SPECULATION ON CAUSE AND EFFECT

      43  THE CHANGELING

      44  KANSAS CITY 1969

      45  STASIS IN MOTION or THE SHOWER SCENE IN DOUGLAS GORDON’S 24 HOUR PSYCHO LASTS A HALF HOUR

      46  ANEMOGRAPH

      47  ST. LOUIS ELEGY

      48  THE FRICTION BETWEEN A STRING AND BOW CALLS FORTH A PLAINTIVE HYMN

      49  STUDY FOR THE FALL OF THE REBEL ANGELS

      50  SPECULATION ON THE AFTERLIFE

      51  ANOTHER SPECULATION ON THE AFTERLIFE

      52  SOUVENIR DE VOYAGE

        Notes

        Acknowledgments

        About the Author

      AUGURY

      Inside the camera obscura,

      a cloud,

      Or the image of a cloud, grows darker.

      The past warps, curls back round to touch the present.

      Is it the spit and clay on the blind man’s eyes

      Or the little spell of words that returns sight?

      Look, they said.

      So I looked. But I saw nothing.

      A book of moths. A book of sand.

      A book of stones unstitched from the wolf’s belly.

      Shot through with light,

      a book of blank pages.

      The solution embodies yet keeps hidden

      All dissolved within it,

      keeps the hermetic

      Hemmed in, the secret secret a bit longer.

      The Geiger counter’s tick-tick like an old clock’s.

      Foreign voices on the shortwave, static

      Like a mother’s shush,

      like crushed salt through a sieve.

      The past waits unmoved:

      a rusted wrecking ball

      In a vacant lot: a scoured erratic

      Set down by a glacier—out of place, useless.

      A book of nuance that resists closure.

      Book of Desire.

       Book of the Vertigo of Desire.

      Book in which the whole is latent in the partial.

      Rooks roost in the quarry cliffs; goldfinches

      Flit and dart. Water long concealed in shadowed cisterns

      Takes on a ferrous edge.

      Look, they said.

      SPECULATION ON SUFFERING

      On a Babylonian bas-relief,

      An antelope fawn’s

      Forelegs collapse;

      Neck taut, it swings

      Its head back

      As a lion latches

      Onto its hindquarters.

      How stable a moment

      Of suffering: