Creators

CREATORS

At The Washington Zoo the animals
testified, collectively,
to the zaniness of their creator,
who made even the great Henri Rousseau
seem little more than derivative.
Clearly, though, nobody was in control.

How can you take seriously a god
who'd put in the same universe
a rhinoceros, say, and a tapir?
Or, for that matter, a man and a woman?
Or, in the same room, a passel of poets?

Back at the Washington Hilton,
at The International Poetry Conference,
people duped from all over
were seeking prizes for work
the smallest monkey in the monkey house
exceeded by merely hanging from a branch.

Granted, some of the creatures
gathered at the Hilton wanted to know
something about creation. But others
were content to make sang rhyme
with orangutan, themselves with themselves.

I was their ape, just a bigger one of them,
a consenting ape, come to read
from a few of my ape books,
which I thought were theirs as well.
But I was preceding the Marvellettes
and they were impatient with me, and noisy.

I wanted to be back at the real zoo
where the keepers bathe the elephants
and get in the water with the sea lions.
What a fool I'd been to try to act
the good ape in a world like this.
I should have leapt on their tables,
ripped their shirts off,
given them something to think about.


Stephen Dunn

Posted over on Rottend Staal