Monologue to Myself
Being so close to something
so alive, so otherworldly,
it was multidimensional,
there was a buzzing
in the air, the air opening,
seared with light,
an instantaneous rupture
which closed again
after it hovered
over her head
in a flash of gold,
perhaps, the response to
the monologue to myself,
regarding the purpose
of commitment, the need
for prudence in planning
one’s final days,
not so much different
than before I came
to visit you this morning,
when you relayed to me
you saw me from a distance,
walking up from the road,
leaving the blossoms behind.
Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize. Recent essays, poems, and translations have appeared in Asymptote (Taiwan), Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, The Comstock Review, Healing Muse: Center for Bioethics & Humanities La Piccioletta Barca (U.K.), Pensive: A Journal of Global Spirituality & the Arts, Tipton Poetry Review, Poetry London, and Your Impossible Voice. Shanti Arts published his translation of L’Allegria, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s first iconic book, in August 2023. He will be featured writer in the Spring 2025 issue of Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation that will highlight several of his translations from the Spanish of Roberto Juarroz.
Finishing Line Press will be publishing his book, If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from The Book of Hours, in 2025.
Amethyst Review 