The University of Kansas Libraries

Flutes in Tunisia

by Julianne Buchsbaum

The purple mosque casts
A shadow of green
quite far from where we are
or want to be.

Telephone wires
encircle a pole
like electrocuted snakes.
Still we are drawing the pall

over a love
short-circuited long ago.
We should admit that now
we’ll never know

why flutes in Tunisia
do not sound the same
as they sound here,
though arsonous flames

consume as quickly
leaves that look like they
were dipped in blood.
As if there were a way

to attune a man’s
sleeping tympanum
to thunder and the pules
of wind while from

a fragrant monticule
where once his sultan frowned,
he observes the cloistered
circle of a sleeping town

and lights that fibrillate dimly
in the skin of night.
Even his minions were
unnerved by fright

as waves collapsed at the prow
like torn fans
and corsairs hooted
on the Mediterranean.

Hear Julie Buchsbaum speak tonight!

On April 30, poet and librarian Julie Buchsbaum will give a lecture on American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, “The Never-Ending Meditation: Wallace Stevens and Pragmatic Theories of Truth,” in which she will explore Wallace Stevens’ long poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” through the lens of American Pragmatist epistemology.

Buchsbaum is the author of the poetry collections Slowly, Slowly, Horses (Ausable Press, 2001) and A Little Night Comes (Del Sol Press, 2005). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Missouri.

The lecture will be held at Watson Library, 3rd floor west from 6 to 7 p.m. (More information and related events...)

KU Libraries collections contain more than 28,000 books of or about poetry. Throughout April, a special selection of poetry books will be available for checkout in Watson Library near the 3rd floor service desk. Come check it out!

Return to KU Libraries Poem-a-Day main page.