The Last Troubadour

David St. John

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780062640956
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

A haunting and intimately observed new collection from David St. John, a poet of soaring imagination and passionate candor

In The Last Troubadour, David St. John has given us a collection of new and selected poems of astonishing beauty, precise and keenly observed but also touched with sensuality and deep feeling. Nothing is too small to escape notice (in "Guitar" St. John reflects on the beauty of that word) or too large to be explored-the suicide of a friend, the illness of a lover, or the texture of longing and desire. A sharp observer of landscapes within and without, St. John directs his empathetic gaze and vivid, inventive voice to investigating both the darkest and the most inspiring parts of being human, the small moments between friends and lovers as well as the groundswells that alter lives.

At times lyrical, sometimes conversational, occasionally wry and playful, St. John's poetry reveals an expansive vision animated by "intimacy and subtlety, and by a disturbing force, the work of an urgent sensibility and a true ear." (W.S. Merwin) The beauty, music, and artistry of David St. John's widely admired work is fully on display in this masterful collection.

I.

SELECTED POEMS

(1976–2012)

SLOW DANCE

It’s like the riddle Tolstoy

Put to his son, pacing off the long fields

Deepening in ice. Or the little song

Of Anna’s heels, knocking

Through the cold ballroom. It’s the relief

A rain enters in a diary, left open under the sky.

The night releases

Its stars, & the birds the new morning. It is an act of grace

& disgust. A gesture of light:

The lamp turned low in the window, the harvest

Fire across the far warp of the land. The somber

Cadence of boots returns. A village

Pocked with soldiers, the dishes rattling in the cupboard

As an old serving woman carries a huge, silver spoon

Into the room & as she polishes she holds it just

So in the light, & the fat

Of her jowls

Goes taut in the reflection. It’s what shapes

The sag of those cheeks, & has

Nothing to do with death though it is as simple, & insistent.

Like a coat too tight at the shoulders, or a bedroom

Weary of its single guest. At last, a body

Is spent by sleep: A dream stealing the arms, the legs.

A lover who has left you

Walking constantly away, beyond that stand

Of bare, autumnal trees: Vague, & loose. Yet, it’s only

The dirt that consoles the root. You must begin

Again to move, towards the icy sill. A small

Girl behind a hedge of snow

Working a stick puppet so furiously the passersby bump

Into one another, watching the stiff arms

Fling out to either side, & the nervous goose step, the dances

Going on, & on

Though the girl is growing cold in her thin coat & silver

Leotard. She lays her cheek to the frozen bank

& lets the puppet sprawl upon her,

Across her face, & a single man is left twirling very

Slowly, until the street

Is empty of everything but snow. The snow

Falling, & the puppet. That girl. You close the window,

& for the night’s affair slip on the gloves

Sewn of the delicate

Hides of mice. They are like the redemption

Of a drastic weather: Your boat

Put out too soon to sea,

Come back. Like the last testimony, & trace of desire. Or,

How your blouse considers your breasts,

How your lips preface your tongue, & how a man

Assigns a silence to his words. We know lovers who quarrel

At a party stay in the cool trajectory

Of the other’s glance,

Spinning through pockets of conversation, sliding in & out

Of the little gaps between us all until they brush or stand at last

Back to back, & the one hooks

An ankle around the other’s foot. Even the woman

Undressing to music on a stage & the man going home the longest

Way after a night of drinking remember

The brave lyric of a heel-&-toe. As we remember the young

Acolyte tipping

The flame to the farthest candle & turning

To the congregation, twirling his gold & white satin

Skirts so that everyone can see his woolen socks & rough shoes

Thick as the hunter’s boots that disappear & rise

Again in the tall rice

Of the marsh. The dogs, the heavy musk of duck. How the leaves

Introduce us to the tree. How the tree signals

The season, & we begin

Once more to move: Place to place. Hand

To smoother & more lovely hand. A slow dance. To get along.

You toss your corsage onto the waters turning

Under the fountain, & walk back

To the haze of men & women, the lazy amber & pink lanterns

Where you will wait for nothing more than the slight gesture

Of a hand, asking

For this slow dance, & another thick & breathless night.

Yet, you want none of it. Only, to return

To the countryside....