A Walk in the Morning Sun by Stephanie Burt
PN Review 185, January - February 2009
A Walk in the Morning Sun
after Pablo Neruda
Let me tell you: sometimes I get so tired
of being a human being that I stroll in
to dry cleaners, pharmacies, and video stores
so parched, so lost, like a swan made out of felt
in a grade - school diorama, stuck with paste
on a cardboard pond somewhere between death and birth -
I wander from shelf to shelf, and customers flee.
All I know that I want
right now is to sleep all day, like a stone under frost,
like a wool cardigan locked in a chest for a year.
I get so tired of having fingernails,
of having eyes and feet, a scalp and hair,
so tired, in fact, of having to be
a man...
Still, I wouldn't mind
surprising a clerk at Home Depot with a lily,
or knocking a sportscaster out with a punch in the head.
It might be beautiful, even today,
to canvass the addresses on my block with a knife,
until some carpenter kicked me to death on his lawn.
I don't want to go on
being such a root,
trembling a bit in the loose earth,
processing nourishment all the lengthy day.
I don't want more shame
from waking up as if buried inside myself,
terrified by something all the time.
That's why Monday, when she sees me coming,
swerves on her axle and takes off, out of town;
she looks for happy wanderers, not this friable
dwelling on whatever I'll never be.
That's why, in my new dreams, I explore
old houses, some so humid I can't move,
or else deserted hospitals, oleaginous
shoe stores, roads like manicured scars:
all of them tell me I'm lucky to be where I am,
to know whatever I know, to live as I do.
I walk among them trying not to cry
because my rage lacks suitable objects,
because, that is, it's nobody's fault how I feel.
Shrubberies list my obligations, losing
a few in their unimportant leaves.
In the same dreams, it rains, then stops; I pass
woodpiles, smashed glass, then a bruised garage,
a stack of bicycles too hot to touch,
until I encounter a yard at least fifty years old,
with no newspapers, no chairs, on its lick of grass;
there's a clothesline, though, and on its hanging
camisoles, men's underthings, thin slacks,
pale golden slips, workshirts, and cotton
overalls, I see just a couple of tears.
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This poem by Stephanie Burt is taken from PN Review 185, January - February 2009. Further contributions from Burt are available in the archive to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.