<< Issue 33
Vincent Katz
Rain
Screen grid or water?
Mind travels out but
Can’t move past rain
Accumulating in front
Of buildings and roofs
The sound of it she said
To listen to then sirens
Occupied space inside
Our heads we laughed
That’s the quiet sound
We thought to hear
Looking out is only
Sound a low rumbling
That is always there
Always beneath us
All our lives, wherever
We find solace, quiet
Or the brightness that
Shocks, I love that hum
Continuous connecting
Persons distant country
City imagination one
Consistent hum even
Against whatever points
At us, pulls recognition
Apart, desolate query
To fail, this system
Minute within celestial
Sphere, but people
Relish causing pain
I want to walk now
Feel rain on my clothes
And skin, feel these
Same paces, path
I know from one house
To another, or only
To the river, or only
The avenue, place
Where rain connects
People’s walking urge
Vincent Katz is a poet and translator. He is the author of the poetry collections Broadway for Paul (Alfred A. Knopf), Southness (Lunar Chandelier Press) and Swimming Home (Nightboat Books), as well as The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (Princeton). He has curated exhibitions on Black Mountain College and Rudy Burckhardt and recently co-curated a retrospective of the films of Isabelle Huppert at Film Forum in New York. In 2021, he collaborated with composer Sarah Sarhandi on an opera, While There’s Light, based on his translations of Propertius, that appeared at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival in London. Katz’s writing on contemporary art and poetry has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and The Poetry Project Newsletter. He lives in New York City.