Fred Marchant

Poet and translator, workshop teacher, and manuscript consultation

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The Looking House Stanza

 

When the melancholia blew in

like a storm off the North Atlantic

the ground we walked on sloped

all the way down to the little we

could remember, grew slippery

with loose pebbles of everything

we wanted to forget. We watched

a wild scattering of loss unfold—

the lives we had wanted to live,

or lived once, all falling away

into mists thick enough to hide

the sheep, make their bleating

sound like a mind in distress.

We waded in rainwater, rivers

of inexplicable fear, and it was

not from sadness we took refuge

in the lee of a ruin, a slate hut

herders were forced to abandon

in famine. A hillside of reminders

of how little we knew about fatal

sorrow, and indignity without end.

We gathered what we could imagine

of a suffering of such focus and density

it seemed sent to re-make the world

into fog, and reduce lives to shivers

so vicious no one could stop shaking.

Hope stared at nothing, with nothing

forthcoming. In a room without roof,

by a window minus its wall, I saw

a mind I loved could no longer go on.

I would have sheltered you from all,

but there was nothing but rain and wind

to hold onto. I blustered, I swore,

I shook you by the shoulders, thinking

there must be something I could do.

Fred Marchant's signature

from The Looking House

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Poems

Thoreau quote at Walden PondA Cairn by the Cabin
A Place at the Table, poem by Fred Marchant. Photo by Stefi RubinA Place at the Table
Bristlecone, poem by Fred MarchantBristlecone
library
Olive Harvest, poem by Fred MarchantOlive Harvest
On a Collage by Peter Sacks
St. John's Point, photo and poem by Fred MarchantSt. John’s Point
The Looking House, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Looking House Stanza
Migrants, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Migrants
The Peach, by Võ Quê
The Salt Stronger, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Salt Stronger
Fred Marchant, reading for Warrior WritersTipping Point

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