Chard deNiord: I stand beneath the mountain with an illiterate heart
The darkness of my sacred ignorance enlightens me.
Chard deNiord: Dispatch from Gaia
Mother’s cawing, “You must do what seems impossible now,
but you’ve done it before.”
Chard DeNiord: In my Unknowing
Oh taste and see. –Psalm 34, 8 . I was driving through the fields of Heaven when I realized I was still on Earth, because Earth was all I had … Continue reading
Chard DeNiord: At Auden’s Grave, September 1, 2016
“We must love one another or die.” — W.H. Auden What caused you to think it was a lie, Old Master—that either/or that gave you pause in “September 1, … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Herr President
Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses he toys with the tributes of half-men. — From “The Stalin Epigram” by Osip Mandelstam Have you no sense of decency, sir?— Joseph … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Prophecy Against Those
They will grow ass’s ears and stand and stand like guards at the funerals of their own mothers. They will forget history as if it were a bad memory they … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Where And How Blood Was Made
Her son’s dreadful bodies, buried by that mass, drenched the Earth with streams of blood, and they say she warmed it to new life, so that a trace of her … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Poetry
The secret I have no say in keeping is safe with me and everyone else who sees himself in the space between the stars. How to tell what can’t … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Lost Things
You find other lost things while looking for the lost thing, things that are consolations for what’s missing, things you also looked for with the same intensity that faded in … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Late Night Listening, Tahiri Square, February 2, 2011
I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? Elizabeth Bishop I heard their voices inside … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: Song
. Memory’s needle tracked a groove until it bled. You called it “the little heaven of memory” and covered your ears. You called it “Please Please Please…” You sang along … Continue reading
Chard deNiord: The River Merchant’s Mistress, a Letter
Return to her in the mercy of desire no matter where she waits in … Continue reading
Chard DeNiord: How are you supposed to know who the poets are?
Too many good books are lost in the sea of hyperbolic blurbs, slick marketing, and over production. Robin Williams’ character, a recent Soviet defector in the 1984 film “Moscow on … Continue reading
Chard De Niord: The media continue to play into the terrorists’ hands
There are millions of Muslims who find the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere reprehensible and antithetical to Islam. I heard a French Muslim, who is also a town official, … Continue reading →