print previewback EDWARD MAYES
On Lines from Czesław Miłosz’s “Meaning”
A word wakened by lips that perish
—I dreamt I pulled a word
Out of the water, I had hooked it,
It was bloodied and oddly bent,
And so that’s where I got my
Irony, I heard myself say, and then I woke up.—Didn’t I awaken late and didn’t I
Take the bus to the beach, or when I
Read Emily Dickinson while getting my smog
Check, the radio on to something, visible
Turbulence all around me, and me keeping watch?—Haven’t we all pretended to greenness,
Lobes and spadices and spathes, the jack-in-the-
Pulpit spouting shibboleths, or when the action swerves,
The verbs turn pro, my blind grandfather used the clothesline
As his guide, yet another way to abandon our lives?
This poem refers to Campbell McGrath’s poem “Reading Emily Dickinson at Jiffy Lube,” and to his reading
of Czesław Miłosz’s poem “Realism,” on The New Yorker podcast, specifically the lines:
Now we agree
That those trees outside the window, which probably exist,
Only pretend to greenness and treeness
Godzimy się
Że te drzewa za oknem, które chyba są,
Udają tylko drzewiastość i zieleń