Five Points, Vol. 3 No. 2
Winter 1999From Philip Levine: “I loved the way Neruda could let almost anything fly into a poem. If you put your hand over the poem you have no idea what’s going to appear in the next line, but somehow he can make it belong.”
Sample Content
Eamon Grennan
Truth
It’s odd how the truth or what seems like it
can strike at unlikely moments: you’re lacing
your boots up, for instance, ready to go out
and walk the round from strand to village,
and you’re bent down, concentrating on the dark
brown strip of lace and the lightbrown suede
skin of the boot, thinking how handsomely
they match, when it strikes you that no matter
what happens there will always have to be
such small moments bristling with the simple
fact that things just are: your fingers, fiddling
with the lace; the feel of suede, of metal; that
spot of sunshine lighting on your left ankle.