Rough Beast
by Jean Monahan
.....
by Jean Monahan
.....
Hear Jean Monahan read this poem (in RealAudio)Don't tell a camel about need and want.
Look at the big lips
pursed
in perpetual kiss,
the dangerous lashes
of a born coquette.
The camel is an animal
grateful for less.
It keeps to itself
the hidden spring choked with grass,
the sharpest thorn
on the sweetest stalk.
When a voice was heard crying in the wilderness,
when God spoke
from the burning bush,
the camel was the only animal
to answer back.
Dune on stilts,
it leans into the long horizon,
bloodhounding
the secret caches of watermelon
brought forth like manna
from the sand.
It will bear no false gods
before it:
not the trader
who cinches its hump
with rope,
nor the tourist.
It has a clear sense of its place in the world:
after water and watermelon,
heat and light,
silence and science,
it is the last great hope,
Noah's ark,
Virgin of the oasis
who brings forth milk
under a deadly sky.
Year after year
it follows the bright stars
east, falls to its knees
for the lowliest king.
Except, of course, when the top lip
lifts like a curtain
on a mighty sneer.
Then you may hear,
out of the mouth of that rough beast,
the walls of the wide world
collapse.
Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; September 2001; Rough Beast; Volume 288, No. 2; 83.