Harvard Classics
By Henri Cole
It is the hour of lamps.
On our knees my mother
and I, still young, color
with crayons threadbare nap
on the living room rug.
Though there is no money,
no one seems to care. We
are self-possessed as bugs
waving their antennae
through cracks in the kitchen's
linoleum floor. When
Father begins to read
from the red gilt volume
in his lap, a circle
of light encapsulates
us like hearts in a womb.
Except their marriage is
already dead. I know
this though I'm only six.
So we visit pharaohs,
a boatman on the Nile,
Crusaders eating grapes
on a beach. Life escapes
with all its sadness while
two tragic Greek poets
inhabit Father's voice.
Who'd know I am just a boy
when he begins a stoic
moral tale concerning
a dull provincial doctor's
young French wife? If Mother,
in French, begins to sing
to herself, I know she's
had enough. Crayon stubs
litter the crumbling rug.
Our prostrate cat sneezes
at the dust in her fur.
And cries from a swallow
remind us one swallow
doesn't make a summer.
Copyright Credit: Henri Cole, "Harvard Classics" from The Look of Things. Copyright © 1996 by Henri Cole. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)