Fable of the Ant and the Word
By Mary Barnard
Ink-black, but moving independently
across the black and white parquet of print,
the ant cancels the author out. The page,
translated to itself, bears hair-like legs
disturbing the fine hairs of its fiber.
These are the feet of summer, pillaging meaning,
destroying Alexandria. Sunlight is silence
laying waste all languages, until, thinly,
the fictional dialogue begins again:
the page goes on telling another story.
Copyright Credit: Mary Barnard, “Fable of the Ant and the Word” from Collected Poems (Portland: Breitenbush, 1979). Used by permission of the Estate of Mary Barnard.
Source: Poetry (February 1944)