One of the Smallest
Made of the fist gray light
that came into my room,
made of the hole itself
in the cracked window blind,
thus made of sushine, thus made of
gas and water, one of the
smallest, smallest, made of
that which seized the eye,
that which an eagle needs
and even a mole, a mole, a
rabbit, a quail, a lilac,
it was uncreated. I
fought for it, I tore down
walls, I cut my trees,
I lay on my back, I had a
rock to support my head, I
swam in two directions,
I lay down smiling, the sun
made my eyes water, what
the wind and the dirt took away
and what was abraded and what was
exhausted, exhausted, was only
a just reflection. The sun
slowly died and I much
quicker, muck quicker, I raced
until I was wrinkled but I was
lost as the star was and I
was losing light, I was dying
before I was born, thus I was
blue at the start, though I was
red much later, much later,
for I was a copy, but I was
something exploding and I was
born for just that but fought
against it, against it. The light
of morning was gray with a green
and that of evening was almost a
rose in one sky though it was
white in another—at least
in one place the light comes back—
and I disappeared like a fragment
of gas you'd call it, or fire,
fragment by fragment I think,
cooled down and changed into metal,
captured and packaged as it will be
in one or two more centuries
and turned then into a bell—
not a bridge, not a hammer—
really the tongue of a bell,
if bells with still be in use then,
and I will sing as a bell does,
you'd call it tolling—such
was my burst of light seen from
a certain viewpoint though seen from
another, another, no sudden
flash but a long slow burning
as in the olive tree burning,
as in the carob, as slow as the
olive, still giving up chocolate
after two thousand years, that's
what we lacked, our light
was like the comet's, like a
flash of fosfur, a burst
from a Spanish matchbox, the wood
broken in two, the flame
lasting six seconds—I counted—
that is, what the fosfur worked,
two or three lives lived out
in a metal ash tray, one of them
nothing but carbon, one of them
wood part way, poor thing that
died betimes, one snuffed out
just as the neck where the pinkish
head was twisted the wrong way
and one of them curling up
even after burning, thus the
light I loved stacked in a box
depending on two rough sides
and on the wind and on the
gentleness of my hand,
the index finger pressed
agsinst the wood, the flash
of fire always a shock,
always new and enlightening,
the same explosion forever—
I call it forever—forever—
sitting with my mouth open
in some unbearable blue,
bridal wreath in my right hand,
since this is the season, my left hand
scratching and scratching, the sun
in front now. How did dogwood
get into this yard? How did
the iris manage to get here?
And grow that way? I live
without a beard, I'm streaked
with a kind of purple, my hands
are folded and overlapping, I
love the rain, I am
a type of Persian, where I am
and in this season I blossom
for fifteen hours a day, I
walk through streams of some sort—
I like that thinking—corpuscles
bombard my eyes—I call it
light—it was what gave me
life in the first place— no no
shame in wandering, no shame
in adoring—what it what it
was so primitive
we had to disturb it—call it
disturbing, call it interfering—
at five in the morning in front of
the dumpster, at six looking down
on the river, a little tired from
the two hundred steps, my iris
in bloom down there, my maples
blowing a little, I was
a mole and a rabbit, I was
a stone at first, I turned
garish for a while and burned.
(c) 2000 by Gerald Stern. All rights reserved.
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