Franz Wright (March 18, 1953 -May 14, 2015) is an American poet.
He and his father James Wright are the only parent/child pair to have won the Pulitzer Prize in the same category. Wright has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.
AFTER
Franz Wright
Where I am going now
I don’t yet know:
I have, it appears, no destination, no plan.
In fact no particular longing to go
on anymore, at the moment, the cold
weightless fingers encircling my neck
to make me recite, one more time,
the great reasons for being alive.
Permanent address: unknown.
In the first place, we are not convinced
I exist at all. And if I have
a job
it is to be that hour
when the birds who sing all night long wake
and cease one by one,
and the last stars blaze and go out.
It is to be the beam of morning in the room,
the traveler at your front door;
or, if you wake in the night,
the one who is not
at the door.
The one who can see, from far off,
what you hiddenly go through.
The hammer’s shadow in the shadow of a hand.
No one,
and the father of no one.
=========
ICON FROM CHILDHOOD
Franz Wright
Bee light
The bees of the icon
The little prayer
to Mary, maybe
I won’t remember
anything
only
the words. And
that these words
are only
things, but
that all things are shining
words, busy
silently
saying themselves—
they don’t need
me.