Anxiety
There is every evidence of an increasing interest in ATLANTIC poetry. Is an incentive for writers yet unestablished, twice a year we set aside a number of pages in theATLANTICto be devoted to the work of young poets.
BY A. K. RAMANUJAN
Not branchless as the fear tree
it has naked roots and secret twigs.
Not geometric as the parabolas
of hope, it has loose ends
with a knot at the top
that’s me.
it has naked roots and secret twigs.
Not geometric as the parabolas
of hope, it has loose ends
with a knot at the top
that’s me.
Not wakeful in its white-snake
glassy ways like the eloping gaiety of waters,
it drowses, viscous and fibered as pitch.
glassy ways like the eloping gaiety of waters,
it drowses, viscous and fibered as pitch.
Flames have only lungs. Water is all eyes.
The earth has bone for muscle. And the air
is a flock of invisible pigeons.
The earth has bone for muscle. And the air
is a flock of invisible pigeons.
But anxiety can find no metaphor to end it.