An Explanation of America

From An Explanation of America:

LAIR



Robert Pinsky



Inexhaustible, delicate, as if

Without source or medium, daylight

Undoes the mind; the infinite,



Empty actual is too bright,

Scattering to where the road

Whispers, through a mile of woods …



Later, how quiet the house is:

Dusk-like and refined,

The sweet Phoebe-note



Piercing from the trees;

The calm globe of the morning,

Things to read or to write



Ranged on a table; the brain

A dark, stubborn current that breathes

Blood, a deaf wadding,



The hands feeding it paper

And sensations of wood or metal

On its own terms. Trying to read



I persist a while, finish the recognition

By my breath of a dead giant's breath--

Stayed by the space of a rhythm,



Witnessing the blue gulf of the air. "[An] ambitious and immensely likable long poem . . . a poem which--a rare thing--seems to combine intimacy and authority." "Wise and compassionate. . . . It is one of the most readable long poems in recent memory, graspable by all."---Kenneth Funsten, The Los Angeles Times "I can't imagine anyone who, after reading An Explanation of America, wouldn't want to return to it again and again."---William H. Pritchard, Poetry