A Diamond

A Diamond


A Translation for Robert Jones
by Jack Spicer

A diamond
Is there
At the heart of the moon or
the branches or my nakedness
And there is nothing in the universe like diamond
Nothing in the whole mind.

The poem is a seagull resting on a pier
at the end of the ocean.

A dog howls at the moon
A dog howls at the branches
A dog howls at the nakedness
A dog howling with pure mind.

I ask for the poem to be as pure as a seagull’s belly.

The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond
Two words called seagull are peacefully floating
out where the

waves are.
The dog is dead there with the moon,
with the branches, with

my nakedness
And there is nothing in the universe like diamond
Nothing in the whole mind.


Jack Spicer

Published over on Poetry Foundation



Jack Spicer,“A Diamond” from My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008). Used by permission of Peter Gizzi for The Estate of Jack Spicer.