The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      of the staircase

      occasionally giving way

      to the emotions

      It has been chosen

      discriminately

      To graduate

      the dimensions

      ease them into sight

      republic of space

      Radiant deepness

      a thumb

      passed over it

      disarming

      as one who executes robbers

      Waving the gnats

      and the small giants

      aside

      balancing

      How to surprise

      a community

      by excellence

      somehow it occurred

      living a public life

      The original design

      was completed

      no one complained

      In a few years

      it was forgotten

      floating

      It was framed

      like any other work of art

      not too ignobly

      kicking the ladder away

      Now I shall tell you

      why it is beautiful

      Design: extraordinary

      color: cobalt blue

      secret platforms

      Heels twist it

      into shape

      It has a fantastic area

      made for a tread

      that will ascend

      Being humble

      i.e. productive

      Its purpose

      is to take you upward

      On an elevator

      of human fingerprints

      of the most delicate

      fixity

      Being practical

      and knowing its denominator

      To push

      one foot ahead of the other

      Being a composite

      which sneers at marble

      all orthodox movements

      It has discovered

      in the creak of a footstep

      the humility of sound

      Spatially selective

      using this counterfeit

      of height

      To substantiate

      a method of progress

      Reading stairs

      as interpolation

      in the problem of gradualness

      with a heavy and pure logic

      The master builder

      acknowledges this

      As do the artists

      in their dormer rooms

      eternal banishment

      Who are usually grateful

      to anyone who prevents them

      from taking a false step

      And having reached the summit

      would like to stay there

      even if the stairs are withdrawn

Turkey Villas

      At night I sometimes see

      those wooden villas

      as if they were shacks

      caught in an avalanche

      and I crossing the Alps

      Or

      to make a shorter story

      and relate in truth

      to my life

      as if it were San Francisco

      1937

      and a waterfront strike

      the houses on the hills

      were wooden and grey

      tilted

      Those ordinary houses

      in which a few people

      preserved the art

      of pipe playing … A.D.

      It is a vast smooth dream

      this uncrippled Bosphorus

      I don’t like to consider

      what goes on at the bottom

      or the galleons and risks

      that plunged

      as ever so often a canoe

      It is a shade

      a window shade also

      one СКАЧАТЬ