(Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate)

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 1997 by Dobyns, Stephen

and big ones contain more antique thought than most.

That furry Neanderthal or early Cro-Magnon doodling

with charcoal an animal's shape on the cavern wall

was articulating an answer to the question of Why.

It was his reason. We are here, he said, to kill and

eat these big hairy creatures, otherwise we would

be up the wazoo with mastodons and saber tooth tigers.

For this we should thank him, even if he was mistaken.

But then came other reasons and libraries were built

to contain them so they wouldn't lie around in the dirt,

and we had so many reasons because no single person

believes anything he or she has not thought himself

or herself. Simply put, we need a reason for every

person, and the ones prettily expressed or proclaimed

by those with money, power or both, land in a library.

But no one believes them, though they may like them

or admire them, they only believe their own reasons,

which, at best, might be a variation on someone else's.

Your reason may be only a hair different from my own,

which means your's is bogus and you should be ashamed.

Needless to say for every reason there is an argument.

Some lead to quarrels, some to battles, some to wars.

Why are we solo? Perhaps we're just not safe en masse

and so each needs his own head to reatreat to, needs

a place to cogitate and grind the teeth in private.

Immobility in the heart takes the form of hate.

It's not indifference, nor disregard. A punch,

a slap: a hostile grapple, a bristle of muscle,

as when you try to push me down and feet braced

I stand like a rock. A stone is hatred triumphant.

I am the wall you rabbits fling yourselves against.

I am the avalanche over-whelming your smug village.

You wonder why those who hate are not long-lived?

Already they have turned their hearts to cenotaphs.

Their imaginations construct a box in which to put

those who turned away, those who loved them little.

At night from within their chests comes a grating

like a grinding of teeth, as all things sympathetic

are hacked loose or invite the application of ice.

During the day, they walk stiff-legged, make jerky

movements as gravel collects in their bloodstream.

Their definitions are stonelike. Explanations, also.

They are eager to imitate Easter Island figures

or perhaps those fortresses on Spanish hilltops:

busted to dust, forever cautious but dead in the heart.

What lack of love chastened them as children

as resentments built up within their brains?

Now they make up both vehicle and destination:

rusty truck and junk-yard; naughty dog, fetid kennel.

One step forward, one step back, is this an attack

on the immobile: a nonmusical jitter? Truly

advance is vital but where does progress take us?

Doubts to the left of us, doubts to the right:

a cowboy corral, a hound-pound of question marks.

But to go just one step forward or back, to stay

in the same spot, no matter how active, is still

a form of immobility. Let's say I have my tables

and chairs, my books and pots and property piled

up in a heap on a fat plate. If I bounce too much,

won't I drop them? Better not accelerate too quick.