David Keplinger

Encirclement

There is nothing that is not itself,
that will always be itself no matter
what. But there is nothing
that is not self-portrait also.
The hawk dives
down, a mess of dancing
spilling over. It is also
an encirclement around the dead.
I was hurt by someone
I am trying to let go.
I am trying to learn how to deign.
To glide. From out of Aristotle
comes a word, it is hierax, comes
this axe that chops away at air.
It is the hawk.
With distance there is discernment.
It is in me: the wanting
to forgive.

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David Keplinger is the author of seven poetry books, recently Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Rilke Prize. In June, 2020 he was selected for the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. In September 2020, his translations of Danish poet Carsten Rene Nielsen, Forty-One Objects, were longlisted for the National Translation Award. His collection, The World to Come, won the 2021 Minds on Fire Prize from Conduit Books and Ephemera and is forthcoming. His poems appear in Ploughshares, The New England Review, The New Republic, Copper Nickel, Plume and elsewhere.