[without enchantment]

Maxine Chernoff

as things

properly stand

let it be said

that lampposts

are not messages

and sorrow

not a ruse

hands winds

centuries deserts

she fails to find

their significance

banished from the harbor

hope is a memory

MAXINE CHERNOFF is the author of six books of fiction and twelve of poetry. With Paul Hoover, she translated The Selected Poems of Frederick Hölderlin, which won the 2009 PEN Translation Award.