Monolithos

I found a wonderful book of poetry at the library today by a poet whose work I didn't previously know, Jack Gilbert:  Monolithos: Poems, 1962 and 1982.  Unfortunately, it's out of print; I scoured the internet looking for it, because it is one of those rare library finds that I want to own forever, but I can't find a copy for under a hundred bucks.  So I suppose I'll keep renewing it until I'm forced to return it.

Here are two short poems, found on facing pages:

Heart Skidding
The pigeon with a broken wing.
The pigeon with no left foot.
That pigeon with his beak grown wrong
starving among the others eating.
Or the homeless old women carrying
all they own in worn shopping bags
around Chicago at three in the morning.
What is the point of my suffering?
They are nothing to me. Filthy
pigeons.  Jew-hating old women.
Why does it bother with me?


Games
Imagine if suffering were real.
Imagine if those old people were afraid of death.
What if the midget or the girl with one arm
really felt pain?  Imagine how impossible it would be
to live if some people were
alone and afraid all their lives.

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To me this is up there with the best writing, and possibly the best art across disciplines:  lucid, naked, deeply moving, saying everything while appearing to say little.