Shane McCrae

 

 

The Beginning of Time

 

1. The Lost Tribe of Eden and the Word

The tribe of Eden watching watched time
Enter the garden what they saw
A sky-wide lake a shallow pale
Blue paler than the sky was blue

But flowing like a river but
A circle not a line      but flow-
ing like a lizard flowing in
The cage of a child’s hands     although

They had no word for cage     time floated
In the air above them     like a glass cloud
Between them and the sky although
They had no word for glass     a glass cloche

Lowered from far behind the sky in-
to place     between them and the sky
Although they had no word for cloche
And from the cloche the cloud a sky

That wasn’t the blue sky behind
The glass a layer of the un-
derside of the glass     peeled from the glass
And fell and falling melted in

The air and melting either clung
To everything and everyone
In the garden or evaporated
Completely     no one in the the tribe knew

This happened years before the man
And woman came     at first the tribe had
No word for years     but they adapted
The word that once had meant unending

 

1a. How Things in the Garden Ended Before Time Came

A song would pass from mouth to mouth
One mouth to the next mouth until
Each member of the tribe had sung
The lastborn first the firstborn last

One mouth to the next mouth until
The song became a long low scream
The lastborn first the firstborn last
Forgot the song had been a song

The song became a long low scream
Even those who had only sung
Forgot the song had been a song
They forgot even what songs were

Even those who had only sung
Those who had sung each end in words
They forgot even what songs were
They had no words and never had

Those who had sung each end in words
Had sung as each fruit was consumed
They had no words and never had
When instantly each fruit grew back

 


 

Last Sonnet for My Son, 2014

 

Ten and I just       until just now I hadn’t
Realized you’re as smart as any oth-
er boy you’re smarter than most boys       I hadn’t
Realized       you’re smart in ways that don’t mean what
They meant to me at ten to me at for-
ty       smart in the only way at ten I knew and
Understood and I just       don’t anymore
I hadn’t realized you’re all of you       at

Ten you are whole       you are not broken by
Autism not some        fraction of the child
I hoped when you were born you would be I
Know now       but so what       if I know now you’re alread-
y ten       I wrote a book about you weeping
For you and I don’t know what makes you happy

 


Shane McCrae’s most recent books are In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) and Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.


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