I have gathered and failed it, as the treeįor me both ripens and fallows. In its pots until a mist of green bubbled upįor a crust. I have spooned itįrom my husband’s fingers. Have pluckedĪnd washed and cut the weight, and stewed it And the tree calls to this.īut the fruit is real. To believe only in denialīecause you hunger. Not one of suffering, succor, not even of pleasure. Left to us? Not one only of mortification or desire, Lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notesĪre left to rot upon the pavement. In a singular astonishment, its gold tongues What debt am I owed? At whose feet should I layĭisappointment? Delight no more comforting And if it bears no fruit for the killingįrost, or if it flowers late because of a too-warm winter, A better gardenerĬould make demands of such a seed, could train a treeįor what desire anticipates. The sweet meat giving under the press of a thumb,Ĭovering what is its true fruit: the little pit, hard To fill a plastic sack with whatever she can take:
Lot, beside a road, apartment buildings, a dog This tree should be an ancient, revered thing placedĪt the heart of a temple. Looking at the tree, I almost expect the sound of bells,Ī stone church, sheep in flocks. Of August rot, drawing wasps and birds and children Into something not unlike flame: the pale fruitīlushing over weeks through the furred cleft creases:Ī freckling of blood. Waits, with her ladder and sack, for something to break.Ī gold, a lengthening of light. Is change a physical or a spiritual act? Is transformation punishment or reward, reversible or permanent? Does metamorphosis literalize our essential traits, or change us into something utterly new? Nightingale investigates these themes, while considering the roles that pain, violence, art, and voicelessness all play in the changeable selves we present to the world. Nightingale updates many of Ovid’s subjects while remaining true to the Roman epic’s tropes of violence, dismemberment, silence, and fragmentation. At the same time, however, the book includes more intimate lyrics that explore personal transformation, culminating in a series of connected poems that trace the continuing effects of sexual violence and rape on survivors. In Nightingale, a mother undergoes cancer treatments at the same time her daughter transitions into a son a woman comes to painful terms with her new sexual life after becoming quadriplegic a photographer wonders whether her art is to blame for her son’s sudden illness and a widow falls in love with her dead husband’s dog. This collection radically rewrites and contemporizes many of the myths central to Ovid’s epic, The Metamorphoses, Rekdal’s characters changed not by divine intervention but by both ordinary and extraordinary human events.
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