Longing & Absence

By Douglas Browning

Since I continually revise all my attempts at crafting poems, I decided to try the experiment of recording all of my revisions of each poem in a limited series as I wrote them down day to day until I came to a point where I fund myself with a version I either could live with or couldnt. The final versions of the sixteen poems I found acceptable begin this collection. Appended are selections of interim and discarded versions of eleven of these poems, together with a repetition of the final version up to now. Although a labor of love never adds to the value or importance of its product, which must stand on its own feet, it nonetheless owns the glory of its passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514418093

Douglas Browning

Douglas Browning, retired university professor of philosophy, lives outside Georgetown, Texas, where he labors at length over poems and novels, stays up throughout the night reading, writing, and listening to jazz, and enjoys life in his countryside hacienda with his talented and beautiful wife.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Browning.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015917172

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-1807-9

                Softcover        978-1-5144-1808-6

                eBook             978-1-5144-1809-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The second stanza of the poem Two Asides is quoted in its entirety by permission of its author as included in the book Poems: 1950-2009, Copyright © 2010 by Douglas Browning.

The cover photograph, Empathy, a hand-carved Italian Ice alabaster sculpture on granite, is included by permission of artist Lauren Browning and the photographer Peter M. Bryant. All Rights Reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/19/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

701708

Contents

FINAL VERSIONS

Irretrievable

Space

Lullaby

Beauty

Night Rain

In the Moment

Conceits

Someone

Ophélie

The things we can't let go of

Country and Western Song

Endings

The Joy of Flight

Ever Again

Moment of Truth

Entreaty When He Turned Eighty-Six

SOME EARLIER VERSIONS

Introductory

Irretrievable

Ophélie

Beauty

Night Rain

The things we can't let go of

Country and Western Song

Endings

Ever Again

Moment of Truth

Entreaty When He Turned Eighty-Six

for my son

Tony Louis Browning

1954-2014

Syllables bleed from the poet's bare hands.

Immaculate, unopened

he cannot be. He

must bend the blade into his palm

to the deepest bone's rebellion

until the blood bursts finally forth

in its voluble red beauty.

from Two Asides

The temptation exists to direct, to prescribe, to legislate, to generalize, but it must be resisted. Art does not allow generalizations. A work of art is, above all, the celebration of the particular.

Wolf Kahn, Wolf Kahn Pastels, pp. 17-8

Final Versions

Irretrievable

Late afternoon

leaning at the door

not a twitch

alabaster

depthless eyes

of whey and witch

erasing every meaning

ever wished.

Pointless to think

of why or whence or what

might have been

on a late afternoon

just a blackboard's

vacant spread and all

forever left unsaid

in an empty room

mere chalk

swept away

irretrievable

that fading day.

Don't think it rare.

It's just the gift

all over again

of lovers everywhere.

Space

Before me channels fade to shadows

colors fuse, directions disappear,

corridors give out

side to side, up and down

bare X and seeking signs there

I find no way to go.

To my right but now I