Empire of Wonder
Then I knew it was dawn
through which we passed
as through a series of revolving doors
backwards into night
where the tender
red of the pomegranite
lit the lamps in the womb,
the last morning
or the first,
the always-not-yet
morning
where mounted on the horizon
the irons we used
to brand the animals with their names
sank back into the alphabet,
and the prows of ancient islands,
heroic, lapidary torsos
swayed untroubled on the harbor,
answering yes to whatever asked,
to carpenters’ gloves
hanging in clusters from their trellis,
to parapets and mines,
to the furious mineral silence
of the chairs.
CHAD SWEENEY is the author of three books of poetry, Parable of Hide and Seek (Alice James, 2010), Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009), and An Architecture (BlazeVOX, 2007) and editor of Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose (City Lights, 2009). Sweeney’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Crazyhorse, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Black Warrior, and elsewhere. He is coeditor of Parthenon West Review and is working toward a Ph.D. in literature at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he teaches poetry and serves as assistant editor of New Issues Press.
