Ernest Hilbert’s “Boundary Song” appears in a new magazine called The Sonneteer, edited by Ken Gordon. This young publication has already featured the likes of Paul Muldoon, Mary Jo Bang, Timothy Steele, Rachel Hadas, Boris Dralyuk, Carol Muske-Dukes, and many others, as well as short observations and essays on the sonnet. The magazine has 200 subscribers and counting. Sign up! Check it out.

The poem originated in the manuscript for High Ashes, part of what Stevens termed “the whole of harmonium,” when individual lyric poems amount, together, to a “grand poem,” and “one poem proves another and the whole.” I’m not entirely certain why I moved it out of High Ashes and placed it into another called Under the Equinox. It may migrate back in time.

"Boundary Song"

The walls you touch are real; within, a feel
Of pure annihilation—bones and sky.
You’re here alone. This is the only place
To go. You don’t know why you came to kneel 
Before the marble marker. You don’t know why
Its cold is comforting, empty as space.
It holds the thrill of unbearable height
On depths you know to fear. And here you’re left. 
This is the only thing that is the case: 
It’s held so long for you. It bears a heft
Of emptiness, some oldness—recovered traces 
Incised in stone or inked on maps unread.
It isn’t here, but it is the final site,
Night divided on a single line of red.