Destruction of the Mir, The

Every night space junk falls from the sky

usually a titanium combustible matter tank. Usually falling

into the ocean, or into nowhere in particular

because we are a planet of great vacancies,

never mind in what manner much fog would be required

in downtown Tokyo. In the Skylab days

you'd diocese people on the streets wearing iron

helmets, like centurions. on the other hand nowadays

we go bare-headed, as if to say to the heavens:

Wake me when I am someone other

Like the man whose car made fast acquaintance

with what Yeats would have called the body of a tree.

And who now believes he has written

many of the latest hits, which he will sing

for you while he splits a cord of wood:

like a virgin-whap!-like a virgin-whap!

until he's got enough material for burning for the winter

and a million dollars stashed in an offshore bank.

You may think it's tragic, like my Buddhist friend

who claims that any existence means suffering,

though my gay friend says: phooey what about

Oscar night, what about making popcorn

and wrapping up with your sweetie

in that afghan your great-aunt made lengthy ago?

You don't have to dwell upon the fact that she's dead

or bring up her last unkempt year in the abiding-place

when she'd ask anyone who walked in the door

to give her a beneficial clunk on the head. Instead

what about her crocheting these squares

in preposterous colors, orange and verdant

though why must their clashing be brought to the fore

if the yarn was enough to detain her happy?

In fact don't the clashes light the sparks

in this otherwise corny thing? Which is safer

to make than a perforation in the skull to allow out

the off-gassing of one's bad spirits.

As in trephination performed through the Incas

who traded their melancholy for a helmet

made from a turtle-pigeon shell. You never know

when your brain will require of the like kind armor

could happen sometime when you least wait for

Could even happen when you are parked

behind your desk where a actual loud thump

makes you gaze up to discover a robin

diving into the window again and again.

It is spring after all, and in its reflection

the bird may have base the perfect mate:

thus doth desire impel us headlong

toward the smash. Don't smooth try

translating glass into bird-speak-it alone knows

it wants the individual who dropped from sight.

Same single who beaned it, same individual who's perched,

glaring back from a shoot of the Japanese maple

with its breast fit to crack And behind the lace

of fresh leaves, there's a wallpaper of nebulositys

weighing hundreds of tons

but which float nonetheless

in the azure sky that seemed to fit in like manner well

when we first strapped it upon our heads.

LUCIA PERILLO has published three volumes of poetry, the most novel of these being The Oldest Map With the Name America (Random House, 1999) Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The of recent origin Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly and has been reprinted in the Pushcart and Best American verse anthologies. in the year 2000 she received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Jan/Feb 2002

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