..This sculpture was placed facing out to sea at Clark’s Point, on the southern tip of West Beach in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Inside each box, I placed a letterpress print featuring lines of a poem. When read as a whole, the lines of poetry create a cento, or a collaged poem. The cento originated in the 3rd or 4th century C.E. derived from Greek language meaning to plant slips (of trees).
SEA WALL CENTO
MAN DOG
by Jim Harrison
We humans can take off but are no good at landing.
POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM THE PEN OF JOHN JOSEPH WIENERS
by John Landry
I have spent my life trying
to stay out of my own way
I was caught by a tremor of strings
mingled with traffic
TIMESWEEP
by Carl Sandburg
I was born in the morning of the world,
So I know how morning looks
morning in the valley wanting,
morning on a mountain wanting.
LESSONS
by Jacqueline Woodson
Wanted to be with our friends
running wild through Greenville.
There was a man with a peach tree down the road.
FIREFLY
by Jacqueline Woodson
It's almost May
and yesterday
I caught a firefly in my hand.
JIMSON WEED
by Lavonne J. Adams
These blooms sweeten the cooling air, rise like trumpets in a silent fanfare to the dark.
SELF PORTRAIT
by Cynthia Cruz
I wanted not
That. I wanted Saint Francis, the love of
His animals. The wolf, broken and bleeding--
That was me.
HORSE POET
The mustangs travel on
Their home is on the ranges
And among the trees
HORSE AND RIDER
by Ivy Schex
There is no trail that they follow
No path that can be seen
There they travel, horse and rider
NEW ZEALAND
by James K. Baxter
Something new and old
Explores its own pain, hearing
The rain’s choir on curtains of grey moss
Or fingers of the Tasman pressing
On breasts of hardening sand, as actors
Find their own solitude in mirrors,
As one who has buried his dead,
Able at last to give with an open hand.
MARJORIE AGOSÍN
translated by Cola Franzen
A woman sleeps on an island
and from her hair is born the dwelling place
of memories and wild birds.
DREAMS, YELLOW LIONS
by Alistair Campbell
Now it is water I dream of, placid among trees, or lifting casually on a shore.
FOG
by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
WELLINGTON
by Jennifer Compton
There are six kererū in Orangi-Kaupapa Rd feeding on miro:
or pūriru, tawa, tairare.
WELLINGTON
by Anna Jackson
This city is strange to me. The streets
that rise and fall remind me
I was in love once --
but not with whom.
JET
by Tony Hoagland
We gaze into the night as if remembering the bright unbroken planet we once came from, to which we will never be permitted to return. We are amazed how hurt we are. We would give anything for what we have.
DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
by John Landry
we are a collage of fragments
engaged by the rush of
generous land
generous sea
ZOETROPES
by Bill Manhire
The land itself is only smoke at anchor, drifting above Antarctica’s white flower, tied by a thin red line (5000 miles) to Valparaiso.
TIME
by Allen Curnow
I am dust, I am distance, I am lupins along the beach
I am the sums the sole-charge teachers teach
I am cows called to milking and the magpie's screech.
YOU’RE
by Sylvia Plath
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
TIME
by Allen Curnow
I am the nor'west air nosing among the pines
I am the water-race and the rust on railway lines
I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs.
LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
This is the moment of our disregard—
just after supper,
Unseasonable hail in huddles across the porch,
The dogs whimpering,
thunder and lightning eddying off toward the east,
Nothing to answer back to, nothing to dress us down.
PASSAGE III
by Maureen N. McLane
a flyblown carcass
in the underbrush below
the cypress in the cemetery
: the dead above
: the dead below
MONTANA
by Brandon Burtis
I packed up and went to Montana --
a place that I'd seen once before.
THE ESTUARY
by A. R. D. Fairburn
The wind has died, no motion now in the summer's sleepy breath. Silver the sea-grass, the shells and the driftwood, fixed in the moon's vast crystal.
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
Each year it happens this way, each year
Something dead comes back and lifts up its arms,
puts down its luggage
And says—in the same costume, down-at-heels, badly sewn—
I bring you good news from the other world.
OVERNIGHT
by John Yau in memory of Paul Violi (1944–2011)
Did you hear about the two donkeys stuck in an airshaft
You might call this the first of many red herrings
DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
by John Landry
the only revolution
is the revolution of the heart
which beats its mantra: change change change
and we are not who we were a moment ago
LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
It's only in darkness you can see the light, only
From emptiness that things start to fill,
I read once in a dream, I read in a book
under the pink
Redundancies of the spring peach trees.
MERCY, MERCY, ME.
by John Murillo
Maybe memory is all the home
you get.
UNDER THE DOME
by Elise Paschen
Lepidoptera. From the Greek: Scale-wing.
Chrysalis. Stay, butterfly, under the dome.
SEA WALL CENTO
MAN DOG
by Jim Harrison
We humans can take off but are no good at landing.
POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM THE PEN OF JOHN JOSEPH WIENERS
by John Landry
I have spent my life trying
to stay out of my own way
I was caught by a tremor of strings
mingled with traffic
TIMESWEEP
by Carl Sandburg
I was born in the morning of the world,
So I know how morning looks
morning in the valley wanting,
morning on a mountain wanting.
LESSONS
by Jacqueline Woodson
Wanted to be with our friends
running wild through Greenville.
There was a man with a peach tree down the road.
FIREFLY
by Jacqueline Woodson
It's almost May
and yesterday
I caught a firefly in my hand.
JIMSON WEED
by Lavonne J. Adams
These blooms sweeten the cooling air, rise like trumpets in a silent fanfare to the dark.
SELF PORTRAIT
by Cynthia Cruz
I wanted not
That. I wanted Saint Francis, the love of
His animals. The wolf, broken and bleeding--
That was me.
HORSE POET
The mustangs travel on
Their home is on the ranges
And among the trees
HORSE AND RIDER
by Ivy Schex
There is no trail that they follow
No path that can be seen
There they travel, horse and rider
NEW ZEALAND
by James K. Baxter
Something new and old
Explores its own pain, hearing
The rain’s choir on curtains of grey moss
Or fingers of the Tasman pressing
On breasts of hardening sand, as actors
Find their own solitude in mirrors,
As one who has buried his dead,
Able at last to give with an open hand.
MARJORIE AGOSÍN
translated by Cola Franzen
A woman sleeps on an island
and from her hair is born the dwelling place
of memories and wild birds.
DREAMS, YELLOW LIONS
by Alistair Campbell
Now it is water I dream of, placid among trees, or lifting casually on a shore.
FOG
by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
WELLINGTON
by Jennifer Compton
There are six kererū in Orangi-Kaupapa Rd feeding on miro:
or pūriru, tawa, tairare.
WELLINGTON
by Anna Jackson
This city is strange to me. The streets
that rise and fall remind me
I was in love once --
but not with whom.
JET
by Tony Hoagland
We gaze into the night as if remembering the bright unbroken planet we once came from, to which we will never be permitted to return. We are amazed how hurt we are. We would give anything for what we have.
DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
by John Landry
we are a collage of fragments
engaged by the rush of
generous land
generous sea
ZOETROPES
by Bill Manhire
The land itself is only smoke at anchor, drifting above Antarctica’s white flower, tied by a thin red line (5000 miles) to Valparaiso.
TIME
by Allen Curnow
I am dust, I am distance, I am lupins along the beach
I am the sums the sole-charge teachers teach
I am cows called to milking and the magpie's screech.
YOU’RE
by Sylvia Plath
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
TIME
by Allen Curnow
I am the nor'west air nosing among the pines
I am the water-race and the rust on railway lines
I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs.
LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
This is the moment of our disregard—
just after supper,
Unseasonable hail in huddles across the porch,
The dogs whimpering,
thunder and lightning eddying off toward the east,
Nothing to answer back to, nothing to dress us down.
PASSAGE III
by Maureen N. McLane
a flyblown carcass
in the underbrush below
the cypress in the cemetery
: the dead above
: the dead below
MONTANA
by Brandon Burtis
I packed up and went to Montana --
a place that I'd seen once before.
THE ESTUARY
by A. R. D. Fairburn
The wind has died, no motion now in the summer's sleepy breath. Silver the sea-grass, the shells and the driftwood, fixed in the moon's vast crystal.
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
Each year it happens this way, each year
Something dead comes back and lifts up its arms,
puts down its luggage
And says—in the same costume, down-at-heels, badly sewn—
I bring you good news from the other world.
OVERNIGHT
by John Yau in memory of Paul Violi (1944–2011)
Did you hear about the two donkeys stuck in an airshaft
You might call this the first of many red herrings
DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
by John Landry
the only revolution
is the revolution of the heart
which beats its mantra: change change change
and we are not who we were a moment ago
LOOKING AROUND
by Charles Wright
It's only in darkness you can see the light, only
From emptiness that things start to fill,
I read once in a dream, I read in a book
under the pink
Redundancies of the spring peach trees.
MERCY, MERCY, ME.
by John Murillo
Maybe memory is all the home
you get.
UNDER THE DOME
by Elise Paschen
Lepidoptera. From the Greek: Scale-wing.
Chrysalis. Stay, butterfly, under the dome.