‘And For The Record’

AND FOR THE RECORD

Revelations reoccurring, he who is babbling away
in James Madison Plaza, in what goes around,
what comes around, light made holy by the fury
of the tears with which it mingles, simple enough,
when looked at directly, the child, shy and fearful,
who won’t speak. And for the record, the mind,
like the night, has a thousand eyes—
sparrows in the bushes; a small cat
rolls in the snow; sleet pounding the windows.
In the space of a memory, the facade of a church,
an angel on each side of a fiery wheel.

Lawrence Joseph is the author of seven books of poems, most recently A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He has also written two books of prose, Lawyerland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose (University of Michigan Press). He retired as Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law and lives in New York City.