CONTENTS

Author’s Note

NEW POEMS: WEST MOUNTAIN EPILOGUE (2006–2015)

The Language of Mines

Spring Snow

Over the River

West Mountain Epilogue

Home

A Knock at Midnight

His Morning Meditations

Snowday in Pittston

A Dream of Stones

Lackawanna Rail

A Night in the Field

Happy Hour

In the Library After Hours

Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County

Below Zero

The Language of Mines

The Grammar of Affection

Historiography 101

The Grammar of Affection

To Ezra Pound

Song and Skin

Unpatriotic Gore

The Lost Poems

Toward a Poetics of the Next Generation

Poem with Allusions

Lend an Ear

Hunch

Revolutionary Days

Bitch My Tongue

At the Opening

Ars Poetica

Woman by the Way

The Interruption of Summer

A Single Page

Ordinary Time

Magi

Heat Lightning

Belief

Sisters of No Mercy

Midrash

Aristotle in the Middle Ages

The Poor at Heart

The Dissolution

Ordinary Time

Creed

God’s Operation on Adam

The Insomniac Thinks of God

Dead Reckoning

Lament of the Middle Man

Spring Burials

Eternal Tailor

Do Lord Remember

Old Frogs

Blessings

from THE ART OF SUBTRACTION (1998–2005)

After the Terror

The Prophets

The Lost Soldiers

Occupied Country

Sleeping Through the Storm

Listening to the BBC World Service Late at Night

The President Eats Breakfast Alone

Democracy

Fish-Eye View

Peaches

High School

Family Reunion

Covenant in April

Old Teams

Rise

The Broken Neck

Leo

The Trees Are Gone

Borges in Scotland

Mind

Power Stations

Near Old Meldrum, After a Funeral

The Crucifixion

Late Thoughts

The Art of Subtraction

from HOUSE OF DAYS (1989–1998)

Stars Falling

Swimming After Thoughts

Rain Before Nightfall

The Lake House in Autumn

Willow Song

The Discipline of Seeing

A Killing Frost

Who Owns the Land?

Nature Revisited

House of Days

The Lost Scent

At School

Keyser Valley: 1963

To My Father in Late September

The Crow-Mother Tells All

The Small Ones Leave Us

New Morning

Adrift

Demonial

House on Fire

The Ruined House

A Conversation in Oxford

Good Friday in Amalfi

Still Life

Near Pitlochry

I Was There

from TOWN LIFE (1983–1988)

The Mariner

Syrinx

The Visitors

Differentiation

Crops

History

Goodnight, Goodnight

In the Sphere of Common Duty

Reading Through the Night

Skiing Home at Dusk

Town Life

Suburban Swamp

The Function of Winter

A Lost Topography

Passing Through Vermont on Three Martinis

America

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

Portrait of the Artist Underground

Divine Parameters

Solstice, Entering Capricorn

This Kampuchea

At the Ice Cream Parlor

Grandmother in Heaven

At the Ruined Monastery in Amalfi

from ANTHRACITE COUNTRY (1975–1982)

The Sabine Farm

Beginning the World

Walking the Trestle

Playing in the Mines

1913

The Missionary Visits Our Church in Scranton

The Miner’s Wake

Coal Train

Tanya

Snake Hill

Working the Face

The Lackawanna at Dusk

Anthracite Country

The Rain School

The Salt Lick

Learning to Swim

Berry-Picking

The Sea Lily

Amores (After Ovid)

In the Meadow

Seasons of the Skin

Swimming in Late September

Winter of the Dog

This Scrying

To His Dear Friend, Bones

Sleepers

Her Sadness

After the Summer Heroes

This Reaping

Skater in Blue

Summer People

Black Week

Illimitable Kingdom

Near Aberdeen

High Gannet