Jody's Notes
This was a throwaway, a poem written in a burst. (Sometimes I write poems like that.) I'm not sure what I think of it. My aunt (whose judgment I actually trust) thinks that somehow this poem involves the essential me, the real me. Some part of me like that. Presumably, most of my other poems don't.
The original name of the poem was "A writer's pastoral poem."
It was published in The Voyeur, a poetry magazine that I was one of the editors of. It lasted from December 1974 to March of 1977. A lot of work, that literary magazine. I republished the poem in my collection The Lust for Blueprints, first in 1999, and then in the second edition in 2001.
The lamps have gone out to graze.
Shepherds hidden in caves
turn generators that
feed them their grass.
In the evening,
they produce the milk
by which I write.
I like lamps.
© 1977 Jody Azzouni