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Stephen Watts

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Poem of the Open Field

Not that there is a gate to be climbed
          through in my lyric ­-
but what is a poem if not an opening
          onto an open field

The white sutra climbed into the sun
          o my burning crow,
a slabbed path descended to breath,
          a gap to infinity

When magmas rose in circuits toward
          the earth’s crust,
red sulphurs burst on the steepled air,
already the open field was swallowing
         our voices

And in the beautiful discourse of the
           physicists, it was
the autistic poet who brought al-gebr
           and music to the tongue

Giving to logic its lyric and its lemmas
          and opening our eyes to
the most fertile and exacted images of
          verbal disorder.

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