David Stone

Recent History

I paid cash for the restored cabin.
Stranded faces streamed outside,
avoided overstaying night stories,
swam in winds.
Munched caws herded cell welts
in woods. Owls and weasels
avoided the oil stream,
strummed winged instruments.
Tagged shoes, puddles, shovels,
iced lips tangled in metal links.
The calculations of recht
shifted in the voice stream.



(Reference: Paul Celan’s poem ‘Todtnauberg’/ Heidegger’s hut in the Black Forest)



My Ancestral Memory

(for Michael S. Begnal)

Hope began somewhere in north Africa
in some unknown crystalline provenance
where battered pirate vessels cruised
and surfaced beyond the Iron Gate.
Tobacconists, taxidermists and drivers
studied glyphs, glued tokens,
etched bark, stayed in the village.
Meager migrants labored eras.
Ratchets, bayonettes, fashions,
armored divisions landed
in darkness all night.
Crucible steel, sintered
with stolen heat,
transformed
the soul of the earth
without sun.
The gods laughed
in the uncertain sound paths
the fire ate in the grain fields
armored divisions divided rocks
rockets parted everywhere.
We fell falling failed
felt Pluto in tall fields.
My memories are scorched
and burned in Heraclitean fire.



David Stone was born in Chicago in 1949, studied philosophy and literature at the University of Illinois, Tel Aviv University and DePaul University in Chicago with graduate studies in phenomenology. Editor of BLACKBIRD, Stone has been writing and publishing poetry since the 1970s. His new collection, NIGHT TOWN, with illustrations by Belgian artist Guido Vermeulen, will be published by Phrygian Press in 2012.