Marilyn Hacker

Selected Poems, 1965-1990

W.W. Norton, 1994.

The Regent's Park Sonnets

"That was in another country," but the wench
is not yet dead, parks the red-striped pushchair
near the Rose Garden and turns loose her fair
Black Jewish Woman Baby; picks a bench
scoured by warm winds...
squints, focusing on the child, not yours,
who plays explorer.

...Above the play-
ground, like a capsuled world, a plane
heads, fortunately, north. Fresh after rain
the sky is innocently blue. Away
from frisking kids, including mine, I write
stretched on a handkerchief of pungent dry
grass, wishing I could take off my shirt...

From Sonnet 1 in a sequence of eight, previously published in Taking Notice, 1980. There are brief mentions of the park in some of the later sonnets.