This poem is taken from PN Review 51, Volume 13 Number 1, September - October 1986.

Poems

John Peck

From an iced basin at the window, solstice
splashed with spine sheen to a rolling fracture
of the fire entering, bather not there,
auburn Persephone bent rinsing slowly,
corona from the bowl O lucky waker!

full weave, but how could a loom have risen here?
Spindles of steel sorting sun into fibers.
Hers, but the seated one, worn threader
whose sleep was famous, foam washing years from
  her,
floating the treadle ... she too was abandoned,
who would have thought these tines could tense and
 stand?

Wrath feeds on life, ire twists through mastery,
yet masters of life feed wrath without being
  consumed.
Spears these are, lifted by a sudden rank
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