The Island
—A departure from Rilke
1
Tides swamp the path through the mudflats—
on each side everything looks alike; but long
ago this island shut its eyes: ditches wander
among the islanders, each fallen into a sleep
the multiverse tossed up; and few words surface
in them now, just eulogies for strange debris
that washed ashore and remained debris—
like a cheerless gift, the thought behind it
thoughtless—mean, even; and never meant
to make their loneliness feel any less alone.
2
It’s active as a lunar volcano; to find it, then,
use a moon map. The islanders bury their kin,
always a Crockett or a Pruitt, in their front lawns,
feet toward the sea that reared them; but most
keep indoors now, like orphans with head lice,
and peer into the mirrors of old photographs.
In a brogue believed to sound Elizabethan,
the one teen left who plays guitar is singing—
talents he nurtured on the island’s outer dyke,
where gigantic sheep that bite still propagate.
STEVEN CRAMER is the author of seven poetry collections, including The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987); The World Book (1992); Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997); Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; Clangings (2012); and Listen (2020). Departures from Rilke will be published by Arrowsmith Press in November 2023.
Steven’s poems and criticism have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, and Triquarterly; as well as in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poets and The POETRY Anthology, 1912–2002.
Steven has taught literature and writing at Bennington College, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University. Recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he founded and currently teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge.
Steven’s essay, “Merwin’s Evolving Protocols: On the Occasion of ‘The Day Itself,’” appears in Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin (WordFarm, 2012). Cramer’s work is also represented in Villanelles (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series, 2012).
