Skip to content

The markets never rest

Always there are somewhere in agitation

Pork bellies, titanium, winter wheat

Electromagnetic ether peppered with photons

Treasure spewing from Unisys A-15 J mainframes

Across the firmament

Soundlessly among the thunderheads and passenger jets

As they make their nightlong journeys

Across the oceans and steppes

Nebulae, incandescent frog spawn of information

Trembling in the claw of Scorpio

Not an instant, then shooting away

Like an enormous cloud of starlings

Garbage scows move slowly down the estuary

The lights of the airport pulse in morning darkness

Food trucks, propane, tortured hearts

The reticent epistemologist parks

Gets out, checks the curb, reparks

Thunder of jets

Peristalsis of great capitals

How pretty in her tartan scarf

Her ruminative frown

Ambiguity and Reason

Locked in a slow, ferocious tango

Of if not, why not

The Strange Hours Travelers Keep

August Kleinzahler

More from
Poem of the Week

Mira Rosenthal

Features

translated from the Polish written by
Tomasz Różycki
Russell Thornton

Letters