Lift up your heads, O gates;
rise up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may enter.
Psalm 24: 7
Let the bleak & angled
light enter
the earth & its barbed mangle.
Its power
will alter you, who
could admit
no light, you, entombed
like a twig
encased in ice, as night
begins to flee
the slowly emerging
trees, you who see
death, death in all things
incubating,
& not its blesséd
opposite.
Philip MetresPhilip Metres is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015). His work has garnered the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Fellowship, two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Lyric Poetry Prize, Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.
