Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved. Gregory Orr

All the different books you read

      2  You can read the world

      3  How badly the world needs words

      4  How the crocus pops up

      5  The dandelion, too

      6  Oh, I know: the beloved

      7  They said to me: here

      8  Let’s remake the world with words

      9  In the spring swamp

      10  Weighed down with the weight

      11  Humid morning

      12  The sun: a hot hand

      13  No one is grateful

      14  How could that Chinese poet

      15  July sun on the green leaves

      16  Hummingbird’s furious

      17  Whitman’s list of the things he could see

      18  Today only a single poem

      19  Waking now, and we didn’t even know

      20  No one I ever believed said

      21  The beloved often

      22  Spasm and sadness

      23  To Guillaume Apollinaire, the beloved

      24  Saying the word

      25  Not the first lessons of grief

      26  We exist in the mortal world only

      27  Skitterbugs on the stream’s surface

      28  How is it I’m tired

      29  The grapes taste good

      30  Some say you’re lucky

      31  When you’re afraid

      32  How can lines

      33  The poet approaches the lectern

       Part Four

      1  Bittersweet, bittersweet

      2  Ripeness of summer

      3  Wildness of the world

      4  There’s the daisy

      5  Yes, our human time is finite

      6  Last night, a huge storm

      7  All that sorrow

      8  When we lost the beloved

      9  Rain last night

      10  Naked before the beloved

      11  No postmortems, please

      12  Oh, to be deeply naked

      13  I thought I was hunting

      14  Long night on the road

      15  If we could have the world

      16  Autumn with its too-muchness

      17  Is the beloved greedy

      18  Eyes blurred with tears

      19  My mother’s joy

      20  What suffering!

      21  What did someone cynically

      22  A song of resurrection played

      23  The world looks

      24  When the world

      25  Not deepest grief

      26  If deepest grief is hell

      27  And it happens, of course

      28  This room crowded

      29  Clearing out the room

      30  I put the beloved

      31  Not the loss alone

      32  Memories: embers

      33  Scar they stare at

       Part Five

      1  Now the leaves are falling fiercely

      2  Not to make loss beautiful

      3  The beloved moves through the world

      4  The world so huge and dark

      5  Going to the reading

      6  You went to the reading

      7  Expecting so much

      8  Such a shaking

      9  The poem didn’t express

      10  That desolation is the door

      11  Some days it’s all fuzzy

      12  Body of the beloved

      13  How lucky we are

      14  For me, my brother

      15  Invisible distance between

      16  Words not just the empty

      17  Hold off, rain

      18  Where did the beloved go?

      19  Even before speech

      20  The motions so cautious

      21  To see the beloved

      22  Were we invited?

      23  Acrobatic postures I enjoyed

      24  If a peach leads you into the world

      25  Autumn

      26  Sudden shower

      27  Do words outlast

      28  Did the beloved die?

      29  Why should it all

      30  Black marks

      31  No longer a part

      32  You lost the beloved

      33  And if not you, then who?

      34  An anthology gathered

      35  His song was about the world

        About the Author

        Books by Gregory Orr

        Links

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

PART ONE

      Resurrection