Lisel Mueller World Poems
- 1. Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny
Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white:
you shoulder the crow on your left,
the snowbird on your right;
... - 2. For A Thirteenth Birthday
You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
... - 3. Immortality
In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
... - 4. Curriculum Vitae
1992
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
... - 5. Monet Refuses The Operation
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
... - 6. A Day Like Any Other
Such insignificance: a glance
at your record on the doctor's desk
or a letter not meant for you.
How could you have known? It's not true
... - 7. What The Dog Perhaps Hears
If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
... - 8. Five For Country Music
I. Insomnia
The bulb at the front door burns and burns.
If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming
...
