A Poem by Douglas Crase

The pays d’en haut Sublime

for Brian Walker

The fables were always upcountry but
The sublime
Understood in its practical sense as
This map of vista and refuge that slides into mind
Whenever you simply are looking
Has to be here: its precincts
So free of protection, freely desired,
And reached by that hard-driving warpath
Where each vote was personal, something you feel,
Cut time. The fashions
Are always downriver, not the sublime.
It lingers the unlicensed wealth
Due to any inhabitant, some,
Who could hurry its data into an ardent shape
As if life were a sensate
Cartography. So it would seem
In this land where the maps all lie flat
Until, trying one on,
You proceed via graphic new molt as your whole country
Walking—in whose indefensible habits
Let me come too, though the facts
Turn to fables themselves, strike back and run.

Douglas Crase has published of a book of poems, a biography, a commonplace book, and, most recently, a chapbook called The Astropastorals. 

The Poetry Section is edited by Mark Bibbins.