from "The Secret History of Secrets" [Joseph Donahue]

from "The Secret History of Secrets"
[Joseph Donahue]

... There’s no real way, 
an authority assures me 
to locate an event in time 
or in space. There is only 
before and after, only here 
and there, there is only 
a point when, wide awake, 
its like you came home 
after many years and found, 
much to your delight, the old 
kinship system had kept 
a classification for you, like 
that tangle of bare branches
that is a horizon with light 
flying across it towards 
the kind of defeat rarely 
ever heard of, because it is 
followed by so great a joy. ...


You have touched the sun 
and found it to be cool. You 
took it down from the sky, 
the light hung there. On 
a winter field you spread 
the sun before you like it was 
no more than a ground-cloth of 
celestial origin, and you 
lay on it, and felt warmth 
from within the winter earth itself.
Without closing your eyes
you began dreaming.

The complete text of "The Secret History of Secrets" by Joseph Donahue appears online currently at Jacket 2. Joseph Donahue’s most recent volume of poetry is Terra Lucida  (2009). He teaches at Duke University.