Orpheus Alone
Orpheus Alone
Original Text
Mark Strand, New Selected Poems (New York: Knopf, 2007): 172-173. PS 3569.T69 A6 2007X Robarts Library
1It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk
2On the shores of the darkest known river,
3Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks
4And rows of ruined huts half buried in the muck;
5Then to the great court with its marble yard
6Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there
7In the sunken silence of the place and speak
8Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss,
9And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes,
10Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread,
11The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything
12Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come,
13As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream,
14Against the water's will, where all the condemned
15And pointless labor, stunned by his voice's cadence,
16Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled
17Furies, for the first time, would weep, and the soot-filled
18Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride,
19To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light.
20As everyone knows, this was the first great poem,
21Which was followed by days of sitting around
22In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes
23Closed, trying to will her return, but finding
24Only himself, again and again, trapped
25In the chill of his loss, and, finally,
26Without a word, taking off to wander the hills
27Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken
28The image of love and put in its place the world
29As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure
30Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed,
31And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place
32Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept
33The tender grass with the gowns of their shade,
34And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there,
35And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain
36And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light
37Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing
38Rose from its depths and shone as it never had.
39And that was the second great poem,
40Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest
41Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable,
42Invisible source of all longing to be; it came
43As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard
44Awhile, like the coating of frost or the movement
45Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep
46Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame,
47Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes,
48Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees
49By a weaving stream, brushing the bank
50With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs
51Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby,
52With his severed head rolling under the waves,
53Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl
54Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language
55Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,
56Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
57So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
58Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.
Publication Start Year
1989
Publication Notes
The New Yorker, March 6, 1989: 42
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2009
Rhyme
Form