David Cope's fourth collection, Coming Home, binds together the two major strands of his life and art. In poem after poem, Cope is by turn the clear-eyed strider of our broken cities, or the profoundly lyrical explorer of nature, of redemptive human intimacy in all its silence and nakedness. And often there is an extraordinary synthesis, as in:
The Abandoned City
if we sit long enough, will our love grow wise?
the roman mottos tumble from facades & crash.
where statesmen argued the language of law,
cedars split paving stones & broken pillars crumble.
atop the giant boulder, a maple's single thick root
grips granite all the way to soil below, where
we stand amazed. lovers go to sing their love
hand in hand, passing a drunken cursing hulk
who pitches headlong toward a red-faced hooker-
she shrieks, pushing trash cans in his path,
her mouth a red circle of moaning terror.
O air pregnant with mouths opening like new petals,
O silence humming with coos & shrieks,
O rays revving cells in a single juniper needle!

Inhalt
The Descent.- Three Together.- A March Blessing.- At the Open Door.- Joe.- After the Circus.- AP Wire Story: Janitors at Risk.- A Wedding.- A Grey Day, Sparrows.- Before I Leave for the Mountains.- Audubon in Fog: The Descent.- Epitaphs.- Vision.- Hunter's Story.- Friday Afternoon.- Adirondack Moon.- Armstrong to Gothics.- Beyond These Mountains.- The Return.- Vision.- Coming Home.- In Fitful Sleep.- The Return.- Millions of Stars.- A Young, Healthy Doe.- Night & Day.- Fireball in the Clouds.- After The Giants Banquet.- Below the Headlines.- The Front Lines.- Ghazal for the Coming Spring.- Sunday Morning.- Words.- Ghost Dance for La Grand Vitesse.- The Abandoned.- One for Fin.- The Abandoned.- For Fin & George.- A Legend for Hana.- Hearts for Pele.- In the lao Valley.- Cortez.- The Winner, & Still Champeen!.- At the Last.- The Evening Breeze.- Finally Naked.- The River.- The River.- Solitude with Flowers.- A Charm.- Walking.- Pointing It Up.- White Light, Long Shadows.- Pacific Sundown.- Sierra Madre & North to Oregon.- Wild Pillars, Billowing Giant Vapors.- A Longhorn Tale.- Autumn Moon.- This New Day.- Poem Beginning with a Line by Pound.- In Heavy Clouds, In Cold Rain.- No Benedictions.- The Sleepers.- A Prophecy.- An American Revel.- Sewer Break.- White Light.- March.- Half Moon, Big Dipper, & Panoply of Stars.- The Abandoned City.- For Helen Cope.- Catching Nothing.- For All Lost Love.- For the Old Man's Tears.- The Gardener.- Kent Trail.- Each Wound Became a Voodoo Mouth.- El Mozote.- The Abandoned City.- Satie & Dante.- Midsummer Night.- Convent Garden.- Echoes in Silence.- The Lovers Sleep.- What Thou Lovest Well.- Out of the Ruins.- The Vigil.