William Logan

Fall in the Live Oaks

That gilded light, not falling but lifting,
jostling the creams and silvers

in dogwoods already vanishing,
the Spanish moss touched in, rendered

by a few scrapes of the palette knife.
How unbearable, beauty

forgotten only to strike those first moments
of dawn, the lake etched in acid,

oily flames coating the water,
that old touch not even conscious now,

as if nothing mattered more
than the look, the unbearable look.

William Logan

is the author of The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. His new book of poems, Madame X, was published by Penguin last fall. He received the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry in the spring. His next book of criticism, Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure, will be published by Columbia University Press later this year.