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 Contents | July/August 2002 More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. |
The Blizzard
by Robert Thomas .....  Hear Robert Thomas read this poem (in RealAudio)You'll never take off your blue cashmere for me, your jade belt, or even your white walking shoes that squeak like a nurse's. Who are you with now, taking his pulse? Why am I just well enough not to warrant your care? Those snow-white stockings will never drift on my floor like waterlilies. I will row the boat of my sleek, narrow bed to the center of the lake and bask in the sun, opening my basket of strawberries, a buttery cheese, and a musky bottle of Spanish wine, and very gently, carefully get drunk alone. I've had the sun's pleasures, but you are the snow I've never known. I can only imagine the falling crystals on my tongue, each one the moist word of a poem in a language I barely know, fleurs, chaleurs, douleurs ... the blizzard of your body. I think of Ötzi, the Ice Man, 5,000 years ago in the southern Alps, herding his sheep home. He was prepared for anything: a quiver of cherry and dogwood arrows, a longbow of yew, an ax of burnished copper, mushrooms and einkorn in a leather pouch, stripes and a cross of blue- black soot tattooed on his ankles and back. When the snow came, he didn't have a chance. An unusually warm summer, tourists on a picnic, salami and orange soda in their packs. They saw the back of his skull jut from the thawing snow and made a call from their cell phone, talking excitedly in a language that meant nothing to Ötzi: strange vowels, inhuman consonants. I think if you gave yourself to me for just one afternoon, sunlight lapping at the lace curtains, I would be lost in a livid white storm within four howling walls. My extremities would start to go numb, sensation shrink to an azure flame, my lips just starting to form the first words of your language.
Robert Thomas is the author of the forthcoming Door to Door , which won the 2001 Poets Out Loud prize. Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; July/August 2002; The Blizzard; Volume 290, No. 1; 142. |
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