VINYL POETRY

Volume 11, October 2014

BIRDIE
Rachel J. BennettView Contributor’s Note

Prototype for Impermanence

On the border of this world and the beyond
Czesław Miłosz


I don’t know what to do
with the sunlit steps
or the man striking his dog
outside the old synagogue.
Help me find a use
for the catcall and keening
woman I can’t understand
outside the depot. My hands
feel fake. My pride in finding
places to sleep in foreign
languages pales by the coffers
of my inability to save
one caterpillar on a cucumber.
Though the fly, the fly
I saved. Tell me it’s okay.
Just look at that castle.
I want to bring you the way
the throne room smelled. I loved
the sound of my brown shoes
on the inlaid floor. There are
other rooms in which breath
makes itself small, smaller
than a coin, and escapes into
tapestries whose season
is always summer. We sigh.
We know what it is
to be covered with cordovan.
The day’s blue cape can’t
save us all. But listen:
the ghosts are in
their seashells. I love
how mushrooms cook
the same in every country.