Matthew Zapruder is the author of two collections of poetry: American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002) and The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006), selected by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. He is also the co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu (Coffee House Press, 2008). He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the New School and works as an Editor for Wave Books. In Fall 2007 he was a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas. He lives in New York City.
Ancient Sorrow Sleep Already
It takes a great act of will to poke your head
out of the nocturnes to say those clouds
might seem to be hanging but fact is Emily
collide at least once in your teens
so better some slow debacle with a willow
better to flatten a mirthless fence
while its father emits a small overdetermined
ball of laughter refusing to pop
in your throat until a girl with her own
small bird in hers makes of your story
a sleep nest in her chest and knows
better an ambulance followed by an ambulance
for who ever heard such a thing in a story
do they do that always or only on weekends
do you bruise most to know most things you grasp
you cannot sometimes silence without any wishing
is best for others on the phone
like I'd like to purchase you something
you wouldn't notice but won't I was thinking
perhaps a replica of your house so without it
in any way impacting them guests and calamities
could be savored by you and Jim impervious
though I suppose that's what's known
as a poor idea and what could we do
about Rita no way to duplicate her quantumly
complex compact among eagerness anger
and rolling on her back to duplicate
such a pleasure would be for you cruel
as removing the way you so gracefully cede
a portion of silence that it may regard
itself inside someone shoeless hunched
over The Agony of Flies in your kitchen
eating too much gumbo and ravelling
awkward theories of how one constructs
a system of ethics from the words not ghosts
but ether itself forms in ouija and suddenly
everyone knows you mean scrabble and feels
all the more kindly towards you young poet
so why not agree we had a choice
to allow it to continue just as anyway
why not instead a big bright day
your garden can hang like a mirror reflecting
ideas like a friend sits you down in a time
you are not usually sat down in a bar and says
friend and suddenly you are with him
constructing a chrysalis that will survive
long after the small pain formed inside it
has gone on in all of your poems to become
famous for saying friend I've struggled
a long time to tell you this