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« Salinger's Best Story | Main | The Ape That Never Grows Up »

Friday, January 29, 2010

Friday Poem

Jake Addresses the World from the Garden
…………………..

……………Rocks without ch'i [spirit] are dead rocks.

……………..—Mai-Mai Sze, The Way of Chinese Painting
………………………………

It's spring and Jake toddles to the garden

as the sun wobbles up clean and iridescent.
………………………………
He points to the stones asleep and says, "M'mba,"

I guess for the sound they make, takes another step
………………………………
and says, "M'mba," for the small red berries crying

in the holly. "M'mba" for the first sweet sadness
………………………………
of the purplish-black berries in the drooping monkey grass,

and "M'mba" for the little witches' faces bursting into blossom.
………………………………
That's what it's like being shorter than the primary colors,

being deafened by humming stones while the whole world billows
………………………………
behind the curtain, "M'mba," the one word. Meanwhile I go on

troweling, slavering the world with language as Jake squeals
………………………………
like a held bird and begins lallating to me in tongues.

I follow him around as he tries to thread the shine off a stone
………………………………
through the eye of a watchful bird. After a year of banging

his head, all the crying, the awful falling down, now he's trying
………………………………
to explain the vast brightening in his brain by saying "M'mba"

to me again and again. And though I follow with the sadness
………………………………
above which a stone cannot lift itself, I wink and say

"M'mba" back to him. But I don't mean it.
………………………………
by Jack Myers
………………………………
from New American Poets of the ‘90s;
publisher: David R. Godine, 1991

 


Posted by Jim Culleny at 07:48 AM | Permalink

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