Poetry Friday - John Malcolm Brinnin

In honor of Poetry Friday, I offer this beauty by the under-appreciated poet, John Malcolm Brinnin (1916-1999) who taught at Vassar in the 1940's, championed New York City's fledging 92nd St. Y Poetry Center in the early 1950's, and taught at Boston University from 1961-1978.

La Creazione degli Animali

Here that old humpback Tintoretto tells
Of six day’s labor out of Genesis:
Swift from the bowstring of two little trees
Come swans, astonished basilisks and whales,
Amazed flamingos, moles and dragonflies,
to make their lifelong helpless marriages.
Time is a place at last; dumb wonder wells
From the cracked ribs of heaven’s gate and hell’s.

The patriarch in that vicinity
Of bottle seas and eggshell esplanades
Mutters his thunder like a cloud. And yet,
much smaller issues line the palm of God’s
charged hand: a dog laps water, a rabbit sits
grazing at the footprint of divinity.

John Malcolm Brinnin

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Poetry Friday this week is over at Read. Imagine. Talk.
http://www.readimaginetalk.com/small_changes/