Through the air, over water, five crows are taking down a falcon –
it's like a dream:
dream-falcon deposition mercy-falcon
the wings folding and unfolding like any childhood looked at
then looked away from, across it
warriors spurring on forever their still half-wild horses, rivers to ford, still, slaughter ahead – bullet, arrow – horses
included, if you must, then swiftly, despite whatever in a horse might count
as innocence, X, but glittering, let it
split the fair steed's forehead clean in two.
9 The Paris-American
Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books, including Silverchest, forthcoming in 2013, and DoubleShadow (2011), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has also translated Sophocles's Philoctetes and has written a book of prose, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry. Other honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Lambda Literary
Award, and awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Academy ofAmerican Poets, to which he was named a Chancellor in 2006. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
