MARC VINCENZ

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Into the Unseen​​

And it goes deeper 

than you could imagine,

deeper still than the very last layer, 

for there is no full stop:

the butcherbird scries these pastures

since the day the sky

reflects in the water;

she knows each cell

is linked to one another,

deep to their eternal end: 

all those circles of infinity 

bound together in a single forever

of voles and beetles

and crickets and parasites.

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The First God

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Oracles and seers divined, 

prognosticated 

in the greasy entrails 

of a guttural toad, 

in the sibilant calls 

of the pied flycatcher; 

saw omens 

in the curdled milk 

of the fat-tailed sheep,

in a scattering of grains

and seeds and smiting stones,

in the cloudbank and

her peaks and mountain chains, 

and in that lone red-tailed hawk 

who landed on our shifting sands 

then soared away 

with a writhing, bleeding viper

hissing in her talons.

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Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, musician, and artist. He has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and translation. His most recent poetry collections include, Spells for the Wicked, All the Tricks of Language, No More Animal Poems, and IRØNCLAD.  His translation of Swiss poet and novelist Klaus Merz’ selected poems, An Audible Blue, won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Prize for Translated Literature. His most recent translation is In the House, Still Light, also by Klaus Merz. Marc’s own work has also been translated into many languages.

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