Today's poem is by Angie Estes
Requiem
Each October the house beyond
the woods appears, then goes awayin May. The maple opens
to let the blue jay in, thencloses, while all
the trees keep pointingin the same direction.
Every house isa missionary, claimed Frank Lloyd Wright,
but what is it they wantus to believe? Beside the house,
a road, and onto the road raccoon,possum, ground hog, deer occasionally
stray: how the hind leg risesat death, saluting
the sky, just as at the endof Stravinsky's Rite of
Spring, a girl steps ontothe stage and dances herself
to death. The ground keeps openingbut will not speak. To attract
birds, you must make soundslike a bird dying. Begin
with alarmpsssshhttthenmove on to the high-pitched
noises small birds makewhen seized by a predator: loudly
kiss the back of your handor thumb. The origin of music was
grief: a dirge sung annuallyin memory of Linos, ai Linon, alas for
Linos from the Phoenician ai lanu, alasfor us, a harvest
song, lament for the deathof the year. In October, as in Wagner,
you can have the goldbut only by renouncing
love, the past can sometimes beforgotten, and heaven go up
in flames. Wagner always loved to bewhere he died, in Venice,
because he could hear musiconly in the city's silence.
Copyright © 2005 Angie Estes All rights reserved
from Chez Nous
Oberlin College Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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