Jan Schreiber has published Digressions (Aliquando Press, Toronto), Wily Apparitions (Cummington Press, Omaha), and two books of translations. He was one of the founding editors of Canto: Review of the Arts. His poems and reviews have appeared in many magazines and in the online journal Expansive Poetry and Music Online. Recently seven of his poems were set to music by Paul Alan Levi in a song cycle called Zeno's Arrow.



A Change of Heart

She always said the smart ones were depressed
and that her husband didn’t pass the test.
It wasn’t till he died that she felt doubt,
surprised he had the brains to blow them out.



Adam and the Animals

How did he know what he had to know to name them?
To call them not with names uniquely theirs
but common words, as if one sound could tame them?

It seems he trusted that if something bears
a word, its fellow will show up again
some day, to catch a speaker unawares

and prove a likeness. Things have thingness when
they may recur unbid to mind or sight
and call their labels forth from other men.

But he was wild, untutored, penny-bright
and new to tongue. How many suns rose high
in all those skies before he saw the light

and gave them sudden being: “sun” and “sky”?
He started with the wonders he could see.
Some late descendant, blocked and wondering why,

looked inward, found “desire,” “perplexity”—
feelings that swirled until they were defined.
Ur-diagnostician, did you guess that we

would turn your swift surmises into mind?



Inside Outside

From my dim room I see a balcony
covered with vines that filter sun and air.
And there’s a table with a waiting chair
facing the snow-capped mountains and the sea.

Bird songs are sounding from a nearby grove
where orange trees blossom, scenting the light breeze.
The balcony invites me, when I please,
into a sensuous aerie fit for Jove.

But something holds me back, so near the door.
Perhaps the view’s not all that I assume.
Perhaps the wind’s too sharp, the sun too bright …
This is contentment I can settle for:
always to wait here in my sheltered room,
always a breath away from my delight.



Your Idea of Heaven

The people have profound and thought-worn faces.
They all have lived in cosmopolitan places,
pursuing life at superhuman paces.
In art and science they have led the way.
Wisdom shines forth in everything they say,
and none of them give you the time of day.



Song of the Golden Bowl

In what imaginary galaxy
are they assembled—rare and passing gifts
of earth, broken or crushed or burnt to ash?
And to what hell in time are they consigned—
the instants when in rage or carelessness
someone destroyed a lovely, hard-won thing?
The mind’s desire has no ecology.
Some losses new delights cannot revoke.
Yes, art is long, destruction brief; its flash
reduces years of thought and pain to smoke.
Today’s enchantment is tomorrow’s dust.
Luck hovers at the artisan’s deft hand
and luck protects the work—or failing just
an eyelid’s blink, lets glass revert to sand.

Published in Edge City Review, 2000



The Rake’s Progress

Published in Wily Apparitions, 1992

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

When did you last observe me? I am growing
sullen and coherent in this place
and see too much. Outside the house the rain
began without foreboding. It is late.
Now in your speech
I hear the wordless energy of change,
the bodied silence that completes belief.
The temperature has fallen in the night.
The wind is up.
There is nowhere to walk but in the weather.

Last night I watched your forehead as you slept.
Judge if I have no certainty of loss.
Judge. It is snowing now all through the house.

Published in Wily Apparitions, 1992



Men Working in Trees

Perched in arboreal retrofits
our cousins ape our cousins long removed
and, stripped to their imperfect wits,
outstrip with wits the wingéd, clawed, and hooved.

A bucket head on jointed neck
nuzzles the elm, invades its leafy maze,
while fragile fingers hold in check
the technosaurine tendency to graze.

Alive amid such artifacts
some mind has planned excision of these boughs
to make a tunnel that subtracts
green disarray and adds black wires in rows.

The network pierces hills and weaves
exfoliating self-encomiums
through miles and miles of absent leaves
and with the speech of these old monkeys hums.

Published in Wily Apparitions, 1992



Night Piece for Anna

Still in the waning light
as orange clouds marbleize
what was a silver sky
and pines at water’s edge
darken to silhouette,
still are you leaning there
to capture with your brush
the nuances of glowing
alive yet to your eye.

Below you on the ledge,
warmth fading from the air,
the old cat stares at dusk
watching the dark shapes massing.

What spirit aids the unknowing
witnesses of the storm,
helpless against all harm,
whose alert eyes still trap
the fading light and keep
watch and do not weep
their short day’s passing?

Published in Bell Buoys, 1999

The HyperTexts