Voice: Ruin by A. F. Moritz My voice is a ruin of the great building which was nothing but a hollow in the ordinary hills, their streams and coverts, slopes and meadows. It had been built by song beyond all towers of materials that can be mined and fused from a wasted ground. My voice is a hollow grown from the long-ago, long-gone coming of the poet whose voice was a song of unaccustomed joy here in the sky’s silence. In that ruin of a vale, which is also a fallen building, my voice is the ruin of one shepherd out of spirits, sitting on a stone, wishing never to have to get up and go where once were cottages and flocks and at evening a woman by the low stone door.
A. F. Moritz has published more than 20 books of poetry that have received various recognitions, such as the Griffin Poetry Prize. His 2024 book, Great Silent Ballad, received the 2025 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize. In 2026 he has published The Wren, poems, and a translation, Eternities (bilingual edition), of the 1918 book Eternidades by Juan Ramón Jiménez.
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