亚色影库app

An open access publication of the 亚色影库app & Sciences
Winter 2006

Last Supper

Author
Charles Wright
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Charles Wright, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2002, is Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and the author of many books of poetry, including 鈥淐ountry Music: Selected Early Poems鈥 (1982), which won the National Book Award, and 鈥淏lack Zodiac鈥 (1997), which received the Pulitzer Prize. He has also published two works of criticism, 鈥淗alflife鈥 (1983) and 鈥淨uarter Notes鈥 (1995). In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. This poem will appear in 鈥淪car Tissue鈥 in the spring of 2006.

Last Supper

I seem to have come to the end of something, but don鈥檛 know what,
Full moon blood orange just over the top of the redbud tree.
Maundy Thursday tomorrow,
                                           then Good Friday, then Easter in full drag,
Dogwood blossoms like little crosses
All down the street,
                             lilies and jonquils bowing their mitred heads.

Perhaps it鈥檚 a sentimentality about such fey things,
But I don鈥檛 think so.     One knows
There is no end to the other world,
                                                    no matter where it is.
In the event, a reliquary evening for sure,
The bones in their tiny boxes, rosettes under glass.

Or maybe it鈥檚 just the way the snow fell
                                                             a couple of days ago,
So white on the white snowdrops.
As our fathers were bold to tell us,
                                                    it鈥檚 either eat or be eaten.
Spring in its starched bib,
Winter鈥檚 cutlery in its hands.    Cold grace.    Slice and fork.