Extinct
Finally to answer all within one grave!
—Hart Crane, “The Bridge”
Don’t mourn rumors out of stone: those old
persuasions make brilliant canyoned layers,
but it was the Cut–glass Ash’s lot to pass away
along with various flowers, the Undulant Oak
& Bantam Maple (some seeds preserved
in museum drawers) to make way for other things—
Nomad Crabapple. Catacomb Pine. Midwife
Palm & Midwife’s Chat—whose eggs, like dates,
were red before they ripened to an oily black.
The venomous lark & his rapturous praise
of the Upstream Alder’s bitter seeds.
A sacred tree that grew in tropic inlets:
each well–wrought oar, each carved canoe
hewn from its hard wood dozes in dust;
only fossil leaves remain among shards
& bones of the people that lived in its shade;
~
& So? It was poor mad Hart that said
the broken world . . . my word I poured
into the pond I entered once & quickly fled
& slivered bits of their difficult language [1]
still persist in other tongues: their verb
to return from the river without finding a skiff
became in Arawak a trope for unrequited love
in Ös means unbitten: the skin never nipped [2]
| 1 | with a whole tone devoted to requiem speech | ||
 |
2 | untasted fruit is sweetest: what other carpels form such meat around their cache of shining seeds?  |