HOME / poem: A weekly poem, read by the author.

"Tosca With Man in Bedrock"

By Anne WintersPosted Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004, at 7:13 AM ET

Listen to Anne Winters reading this poem.

The Met's first winter broadcast, Tosca, amberized
in her ivory court dress, lets fall
one by one the pure drops of the Vissi d'Arte,
while the cantilevered mezzanine, underlit,
bright-eyed in its nests of stoles and fur tippets, hangs
breathless … Straight down, past sallow platforms, sewer
outfalls and steam lines, the man in the bedrock
sidesteps in his worklamp's flattened yellow,

spools out more wire, lowers his radio probe
to the back of a rust-ridged centenary main
fed by watersheds in the still half glacial Catskills—

and hears, through bellcurves of pings, each note
rebound off his shaft of preCambrian schist. Grey, void—
the Manhattan Schist, laid down too early for fossils.

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Anne Winters is the author of The Key to the City. Her next book of poems will be published in October 2004.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES