April 25, 2008: The Only Animal, Franz Wright
The Only Animal
Franz Wright
The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked, and abruptly
returned,
the room empty
The only animal that cries,
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth?
somewhere
the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backward in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.
And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I’m never coming back,
and yet
this morning
I stood once again
in this world,
the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can’t imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry
strangeness of being
here at all.
You gave us each in secret one thing to perceive.
Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child
You said, though your own heart condemn you
I do not condemn you.
[Franz Wright (son of poet James Wright) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his book Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, which ends with this poem. The book is full of spare, careful poems about finding grace after a lifetime of alcoholism and depression. It’s got a really gorgeous sense of wonder stringing it together; highly recommended.]
More by Franz Wright: My Place & On Earth; Publication Date
A year ago: Dream Song 385, John Berryman
Two years ago: The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel
Three years ago: Man and Wife, Robert Lowell
