Field of silos, of did we keep enoughTo keep us through; walk the fence-line whereThe middle rail broke, reset the trapsBy the manger. Did we pay enoughAttention; should have done with less, put up more,Learned the ditch, repeated the row, the glareOf sun in your eyes, again at your back, the undersongOf the sickle to rise, and lower, the tractorThat still runs. Forgive the mind its winter, its gnaw—The softening ground waits; the ridgeWhere the sky steeples with spire, wind vane, rodTo receive what we cannot handle, in sightAs elsewhere small is the first lightTo light, each room becoming manyHouses filled with their own good doings until astonishedYou also remain. The unlost birds come backTo crown the trees and do not wonderHow each branch bursts into again, how free fallIs ever the stars. Come home changedOr be changed; every harvest will beWeighed against the still to be done.
The Longer Prayer
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“The Longer Prayer” from GEOMETRY OF THE RESTLESS HERD: by Sophie Cabot Black.
Published by Copper Canyon on May 07, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Sophie Cabot Black.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Sophie Cabot Black has four poetry collections, The Misunderstanding of Nature, which received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award, The Descent, which received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award, and The Exchange, which received a starred Publisher’s Weekly review, and which NPR called “the book for you”. Her newest collection, Geometry of the Restless Herd, also received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review.
“Cabot Black’s stunning, fable-like fourth collection urges readers, ‘do not expect the known; you were not there.’ This unusual and poignant volume is equal parts gothic and pastoral, full of incisively written imagery characterized by sparse stanzas that allow each line to shine. . . . The poems in this collection run no risk of being mistaken for another poet’s oeuvre. Singular and striking in their movements and tone, they are a testament to delicate beauty. Cabot Black walks the tightrope between the gnomic and the visceral, and sticks the landing with the utmost skill and tenderness.”
— Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Form and content collude symphonically in Black’s lean, laconic poems. From catalog verse and aphorism, to persona poems in the voices of animals, language emerges as a co-creationary power. . . . The thrust of Geometry of the Restless Herd, while taking account of our straying, incomplete, and changeling natures, is toward revelation.”
— Virginia Konchan, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation
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