An Evening's Entertainment

Selected poems from a lifetime of published and unpublished poems by poet and translator William Elliott.Poems include:Deeper DarkThere is a dark deeperThan shadows' darkness:Remember the airBlanketing the pagesIn a closed book, whereDarkness is utter.Pointed OutA covey of quailFlushed from my brainFlutter to new coverHere in the bramble of a poem,Pretty well-camouflaged.What Distance GrewAbove the vacant lot streetlights arrangedThe night in floating parallelograms;Light licked along the wires, our voicesGreeted there and quarreled horizontallyBetween embarrassed poles, beyond the lights'Dominion. Beside a lake, above a hill,Ravens wrapped their claws around our costlyQuarreling and never knew what distanceGrew within their tight objective grasp.

William I. Elliott William I. Elliott first arrived in Japan in 1960 to teach literature at Kanto Gakuin University. Hehas published seven books of poems and hasco-translated twenty-five volumes of Japanese poetry. Awards include TSL-sponsored Sasagawa Prize and American Book Award.