Adam Clay
Collected Translations
Moments, not decades,
flash in the mind,
but what for?
In any given moment
we know our thoughts
but would it make sense for the water
to know every action as well?
Another breakfast gone.
For the tomato plant
wrecked by winter, there’s
something to be said for the island
that’s more alligator
than ninety acres of land
peering to the north, water
around it we might as well
walk on. A pint of blueberries
gone, except for three
on the floor. It’s never dark
in the mind—the lake’s slow
waves invade all thoughts,
welcome the past like tremors
left behind in the ground’s
cursive and careful bends.
Moments, not decades,
flash in the mind,
but what for?
In any given moment
we know our thoughts
but would it make sense for the water
to know every action as well?
Another breakfast gone.
For the tomato plant
wrecked by winter, there’s
something to be said for the island
that’s more alligator
than ninety acres of land
peering to the north, water
around it we might as well
walk on. A pint of blueberries
gone, except for three
on the floor. It’s never dark
in the mind—the lake’s slow
waves invade all thoughts,
welcome the past like tremors
left behind in the ground’s
cursive and careful bends.
Your Hope For
Going elsewhere with the windows down,
voices scattering
alongside the road, red-winged
blackbirds nearly flying
into the car, curtains opening up
to a Sunday like any Sunday but also like
no Sunday: there’s a voice we forget
but why remember when new voices
filter in through the trees?
A place here or there might
be enough, though should
the fish turn back and belly up,
then we will be reborn
in only the way the living can be:
the grass so manically green
it cannot make sense.
Going elsewhere with the windows down,
voices scattering
alongside the road, red-winged
blackbirds nearly flying
into the car, curtains opening up
to a Sunday like any Sunday but also like
no Sunday: there’s a voice we forget
but why remember when new voices
filter in through the trees?
A place here or there might
be enough, though should
the fish turn back and belly up,
then we will be reborn
in only the way the living can be:
the grass so manically green
it cannot make sense.
Winter Song
Suppose your language like snow:
the ground captured by the silence
between words and the words
less and less important
than they once were, though
not for the time that’s passed
since you spoke them.
I have thoughts sometimes so strange
their departure is only made more bizarre
from their glow. A car careens
from a thought in the mind
and onto the street,
the hills more and more vertical,
the love unshared ends up shoveled
from the sidewalks,
piled along the frozen lake
of your eye, as if any start
is the only type of beginning
ever imagined. I want
a world like you imagine
the world should be
but in pausing,
it’s a song for the grass,
a song for the few gullible
left among us, a song
for our desire for anaphora
in a strangely functional time,
a place void of curtains. When
I leave town,
I leave a part of myself behind
and a part of yourself behind
the house,
the leaves piled around
so symmetrical and certain.
Suppose your language like snow:
the ground captured by the silence
between words and the words
less and less important
than they once were, though
not for the time that’s passed
since you spoke them.
I have thoughts sometimes so strange
their departure is only made more bizarre
from their glow. A car careens
from a thought in the mind
and onto the street,
the hills more and more vertical,
the love unshared ends up shoveled
from the sidewalks,
piled along the frozen lake
of your eye, as if any start
is the only type of beginning
ever imagined. I want
a world like you imagine
the world should be
but in pausing,
it’s a song for the grass,
a song for the few gullible
left among us, a song
for our desire for anaphora
in a strangely functional time,
a place void of curtains. When
I leave town,
I leave a part of myself behind
and a part of yourself behind
the house,
the leaves piled around
so symmetrical and certain.
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Adam Clay is the author of A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A third book of poems is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Crab Orchard Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, Black Warrior Review, Iowa Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He co-edits TYPO Magazine and teaches at the University of Illinois Springfield.
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