The Olive Stump
Aeneas leapt the high walls of the citadel
and took the field, the crimsoned warring soldiers
might've marveled, might've set aside their shields
and dropped their battering rams, but they couldn't
have been surprised. The open ground was cleared.
seamen had for centuries fixed with offerings to
a sheltering god was cut down with the rest and left
a stump. The gods overlook a lot of things, but not
a slight. Aeneas's launched spearhead buried itself
in that tough wood and the hero could not rearm.
the bite. The hero weighed his heavy weapon
and towered up again. We're not told if
the olive bled, or if it wept. Like the man
who clung to the lead pipe a Hutu soldier used
to beat his wife and son, it was beside the point.
by the powers that be. The scales were lifted,
balanced, trued. The fight's outcome was settled on.
Who knows what happened to the olive stump,
or to the family of the man the Hutu soldier
dragged outdoors, doused with kerosene and burned.
The Great God Pan Is Dead
In winter coats the couples arrived
sharing a single umbrella. Others fended off
the sleety rain with hats, newspapers, and scarves.
In the foyer, they took off their overcoats
in silence, though the men were especially solicitous,
and the women left alone to ponder their thoughts
were careful to avoid each other's eyes.
As if stooping beneath a threshold, they bowed
before they entered the room where everyone
gathered into haphazard groups of threes and fours.
They stood that way for a very long time,
and since no one could think what else to do,
some of them wept, some of them prayed,
some of them simply stared outside
as ice flowers formed on the windows,
and the sleet turned slowly to snow.
The Memory-Keeper
The smell of pine and bacon grease,
a house in a piney tract of land, a kitchen
in the house, a stove in the kitchen,
a skillet beneath which lowly burns
a bluish flame the jets discharge when a match
is held against their sound, a sound
that travels outside in from a metered box
where a boy sits watching the radium dials
record the backward passage of time,
and time itself, the beginning
of time, and beyond the beginning
the mind in the act of calling to mind.
The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems
W. W. Norton
Copyright © 2010 by Sherod Santos
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
