Letter to a Gifted Student
to Tim McBride
Know this first: the gift is worthless
you’ve been unwrapping all these years,
unlayering a Christmas paper gorgeous-patterned.
Or shroud-plain as clouds. Or soft dark
as velvet marked with wine or blood.
Each time, you’ll keep the faith, something
will turn up — something material and sharp
as money: a knife, a pair of marble eyes,
a tree, a roofed pagoda, a bone, a flute.
Nothing ever does.
Nothing does its dance
with you again: no paycheck, no crown
of laurel, no dragon slain, no downed
champagne. Just this unshading over and over,
the heart opened like a pomegranate, the compass
undone, landscape sunlit into ruin.
And the human
skin that holds it all so legible and fine?
Serpents are written there; or are they flowers?
Runes? Backlit tattoos, the long story
on the terrible lampshade?
No one will know you’ve opened this,
unlidded the box of music, susurrus
of leaves — an undoing you’ll not cease
to do until words are all over
everything like birdsong or snow, a quilt
of locusts and asphalt and moonlight
all over and crumbling.
And you still here,
unwrapping the disappearing
small rain, the one
serviceable tear.
— FROM Slantwise
(LSU Press, 2000, pp. 41-42)
REPRINTED WITH THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
(LSU Press, 2000, pp. 41-42)
REPRINTED WITH THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com
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