Читать книгу Red Rover Red Rover - Bob Hicok - Страница 10

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The 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.

Red Rover Red Rover

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