Читать книгу Red Rover Red Rover - Bob Hicok - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe feast
I’m hungry. Nothing I’ve put in my body
has changed this. I ripped Genesis from a bible
and devoured it, thinking I’d feel filled
and whole and walk up to deer and stars,
rest my forehead against theirs and telepathically
talk to them as equals, but they all ran away,
deer majestically and stars at a speed
I can’t begin to comprehend. Do you worry
we’ve offended stars and they’re abandoning us?
I do. And you. So on behalf of my anxieties,
I say sorry now on principle to you
and any trees or otters or planets
I have harmed, and look forward to the earth
turning me into sustenance. An aria comes to mind:
A poor woman must feed her dead husband
to their starving children. She’s convinced
she’ll go to Hell whether she does or doesn’t.
The question she ponders in the aria:
Is the dilemma itself Hell
and has she been there her whole life?
It’s an Italian opera so the cruelty
of poverty has a natural poetry to it.
They’re almost the same words—poverty and poetry—
as are dagger and danger, mangle and manage,
lover and lever, inspiration and kazoo.
When her dead husband sings back to her,
he praises her skill as a cook and suggests
the loving ways she might prepare him
to give life, as she gave life so long ago.
I don’t cry as much as I used to
and wonder if standing in the rain
would replenish what I seem unable to give,
visible proof that I long to be absorbed
but recognize that I can’t be.