The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith

Author:Tracy K. Smith [Smith, Tracy K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55597-865-5
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Hunger So Honed

Driving home late through town

He woke me for a deer in the road,

The light smudge of it fragile in the distance,

Free in a way that made me ashamed for our flesh—

His hand on my hand, even the weight

Of our voices not speaking.

I watched a long time

And a long time after we were too far to see,

Told myself I still saw it nosing the shrubs,

All phantom and shadow, so silent

It must have seemed I hadn’t wakened,

But passed into a deeper, more cogent state—

The mind a dark city, a disappearing,

A handkerchief

Swallowed by a fist.

I thought of the animal’s mouth

And the hunger entrusted it. A hunger

So honed the green leaves merely maintain it.

We want so much,

When perhaps we live best

In the spaces between loves,

That unconscious roving,

The heart its own rough animal.

Unfettered.

The second time,

There were two that faced us a moment

The way deer will in their Greek perfection,

As though we were just some offering

The night had delivered.

They disappeared between two houses,

And we drove on, our own limbs,

Our need for one another

Greedy, weak.

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