monday poem #158: Rita Dove, "Primer for the Nuclear Age"
I know, I know, it's not Monday anymore. Monday was eaten by office hours and student papers. Let us speak no more of it.
I've been enjoying reading Dove's earlier poems; the only book of hers I'd read before now was Thomas and Beulah, which I read relatively recently. I'm really glad I decided to focus on collected/selected volumes this year. (Next up: Audre Lorde, and then probably Jane Kenyon or June Jordan.)
But for now, a poem whose last four lines have been echoing in my head for days.
Primer for the Nuclear Age
At the edge of the mariner's
map is written: "Beyond
this point lie Monsters."
Someone left the light on
in the pantry-there's
a skull in there on the shelf
that talks. Blue eyes
in the air, blue as
an idiot's. Any fear, any
memory will do; and if you've
got a heart at all, someday
it will kill you.
- Rita Dove
from Museum
reprinted in Selected Poems
I've been enjoying reading Dove's earlier poems; the only book of hers I'd read before now was Thomas and Beulah, which I read relatively recently. I'm really glad I decided to focus on collected/selected volumes this year. (Next up: Audre Lorde, and then probably Jane Kenyon or June Jordan.)
But for now, a poem whose last four lines have been echoing in my head for days.
Primer for the Nuclear Age
At the edge of the mariner's
map is written: "Beyond
this point lie Monsters."
Someone left the light on
in the pantry-there's
a skull in there on the shelf
that talks. Blue eyes
in the air, blue as
an idiot's. Any fear, any
memory will do; and if you've
got a heart at all, someday
it will kill you.
- Rita Dove
from Museum
reprinted in Selected Poems