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Glyn Maxwell is the author of several books of poetry, including The Sugar Mile. He is also a dramatist whose plays have been staged in New York, Edinburgh, and London. Among other honors, he has won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the E. M. Forster Prize. He was the poetry editor of the New Republic from 2001 to 2007.

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The Nerve

Mariner Books

Excerpt

THE SEA COMES IN LIKE NOTHING
BUT THE SEA

The sea comes in like nothing but the sea,
but still a mind, knowing how seldom words

augment, reorders them before the breaker
and plays them as it comes. All that should sound

is water reaching into the rough space
the mind has cleared. The clearing of that mind

is nothing to the sea. The means whereby
the goats were chosen nothing to the god,

who asked only a breathing life of us,
to prove we were still there when it was doubted.



THE MAN WHO HELD HIS FUNERAL

Rugged and silken, like a country singer
both those things, fastidious and scary,
yet fitted by the terms of his employment
in a sober suit and driving gloves, he seemed
defeated in a civil war still going.

He said he"d lived his life. What was he, sixty?
with children and grandchildren, his car business
solid, sold. He laid his leather hands
on the steering wheel and said he"d lived his life.
And so one day had held his funeral.

Although he looked in his blue single-breasted
right for one, we caught each other"s eyes
and tried to find this funny or him funny.
It depended. All his pals had been invited,
had come from far and wide and there he lay,

face-up in a hired coffin, taking breaks
for Pepsi while he listened to their speeches.
Which, by the grin I saw in the driver"s mirror,
must have delighted him on his bed of satin,
staring with eyes closed. Oh they made cracks,

he told us, they hit home, they didn"t spare me!
We didn"t really know how to receive this,
in the back, on the winning side, except politely,
then without words to stretch back and imagine
his friends were probably mourning him, you"d have to,

because he hadn"t died, because he"d held
his funeral, to hear the case against him,
but had heard nothing and was satisfied,
and reassured that all the things he loved
and strolled among had had their hour of judgment.



THE WEATHER GUY

Hurricane This is scaring us,
Hurricane That"s not far behind,
and we"re not turning our backs one second.
We look at the screen all day. We find

Hurricane This still flapping away
at the shirt of Tom the Weather Guy.
Canada throws an arm around him.
Hurricane That just bats an eye.

Hurricane This is whipping off
the Carolinas" tablecloth;
Hurricane That, amused by this,
is beating ocean into froth.

Hurricane This is playing wolf
to New York City"s clever pig;
Noah"s nailing down his roof
so when it comes it"s nothing big.

Hurricane This is burning out
off Providence; Hurricane That
is disappointing Tom, who"d dreamt
of half Virginia pounded flat.

And Hurricane This was called Renee.
And Hurricane That was Stan.
And Canada pats Tom"s shoulder now
as he hands us back to Jenni-Ann,

who asks about his weekend plans,
which are much the same as ours,
so maybe we"ll see him nosing out
of a local brawl of cars,

and maybe he"ll give us the wave he gets
when the heat kicks in and how,
and it hits the heights he said it would
this far upstate by now.

More likely he"ll just speed away.
And I"d be shy of the love
of those who have to live by what
I have to warn them of.

Copyright © 2002 by Glyn Maxwell.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Nerveby Glyn Maxwell Copyright © 2004 by Glyn Maxwell. Excerpted by permission.
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