John Surowiecki

The Evacuation of Limbo

Someone has probably already told you
about the new decrees and old miscalculations,
the redefined edges of things, the this,

then this, then this, then this, then this,
reaching no conclusion as to cause or
effect and finding little of interest along

the way: nothing to consider really
and nothing to imagine
or read about or learn.

It was a circle of a place, beyond knowing,
since almost all of what a circle is is outside it anyway.
Beyond it spun another circle, the unhappy world of love

and hot air. Something like a sky was left and under it
the remains of a plain where children played and
philosophers demanded daycare centers.

There’s nothing left, nothing at all: no slides, no swings,
no hopscotch courts, no evening breezes
and, if there were, no trees to catch them.

John Surowiecki has written fourteen books of poetry in varying shapes and sizes; the most recent, published this year, is The Place of the Solitaires: Poems from Titles by Wallace Stevens (Wolfson). A fairly long poem, Chez Pétrouchka, based on the Stravinsky ballet, will be published this summer by Bass Clef Books. Poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, AMP, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, Gargoyle, Margie, Oyez Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Rhino, The Southern Review, Tupelo Quarterly, West Branch and Yemassee. He has been awarded the Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for verse drama, the Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize, the Washington Prize, a Connecticut Poetry Fellowship, and the silver medal in the Sunken Garden National Competition.