April 20, 2006: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
Tantalus in May
Reginald Shepherd
When I look down, I see the season’s blinding flowers,
the usual mesmerizing and repellent artifacts:
the frat boy who turns too sharply from my stare,
a cardinal capturing vision in a lilac bush
on my walk home. I’m left to long
even for simple dangers. From the waist up
it’s still winter, I left world behind
a long time ago; waist down it’s catching
up, a woodpecker out my window is mining grubs
from some nameless tree squirrels scramble over.
When I turn back it’s gone, I hadn’t realized
this had gone so far. (Everywhere I look
it’s suddenly spring. No one asked
if I would like to open drastically. Look up.
It’s gone.) Everywhere fruits dangle
I can’t taste, their branches insurmountable,
my tongue burnt by frost. White boys, white flowers,
and foul-mouthed jays, days made of sky-blue boredoms
and everything is seen much too clearly:
the utterance itself is adoration, kissing
stolid air. I hate every lovely thing about them.
[This is a poem about being an outsider — Reginald Shepherd is both
black and gay — about observing and wanting and still being on the
edges of things. It’s also about contrasts: spring and winter,
classic mythology (Tantalus was sentenced to eternal hunger and thirst
by the Greek gods) and frat boys, being on the periphery versus being
surrounded by sensations, desire and hate.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: September Song, Geoffrey Hill
