By Keith Waldrop, from a manuscript in progress. Waldrop has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems (Omnidawn) appeared last year.
what do we
know of what animals know
or how animals
know what they know
we may have
overestimated, my Soul, the
world of evil
even as I
write, what is written
leaves words behind
how refuse
to engage in, comply with, to
bend or bow down
all sites abandoned all
conclusions con-
tradicted
next question: what
name to sign
names give way
eventually even
(perhaps last to
go) names
of rivers
