<< Issue 33
Vincent Katz
Summer Dream
Stepping on the asphalt
Sun beating on my neck
I walk along daydreaming
Seeing rocks, dreaming woods
Ladders propped ‘gainst house and barn
I dream the travel here to there
Imagine landscapes you walk on
See your footsteps on your land
Feet touch grass and earth
Rooted to the place we live
Trees provide shade and air
This hottest of day of August
Feeling that connection, I translation
Make, reach across dimension’s breadth
Silent almost, sky and tree
Light-waving light-touched tops
Save a lone bird and distant poplar
Now whisked higher by upstart breeze
An echo of crickets
And dance anthems past
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.