Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
from Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 1, Sonnets 5 and 6
Part 1, Sonnet 5
Erect no memorial stone. Just let the roses,
year after year, in his memory, bloom.
For it’s Orpheus, and he metamorphoses
into this and that. No need to make room
for any other names; once and for all,
it’s Orpheus if it’s singing. He arrives,
departs. Is it not much that he survives,
sometimes, a few days longer than the bowl
of roses? Although to vanish makes him afraid,
he must vanish so that each of us understands.
In that his word surpasses this existence,
he’s gone alone already into distance.
The lyre’s lattice hinders not his hands.
And when he has overstepped he has obeyed.
Part 1, Sonnet 6
Is he native to this place? No. From both
kingdoms his vast nature got its growth.
This one who knows the willow’s roots knows how,
as a result, to bend the willow’s bough.
When going to bed, never leave bread
and never leave milk on the table: they draw the dead.
But may he, the conjurer who makes them rise,
mix under the mild lids of his eyes
their apparitions with all he has been shown;
and may for him the charm of earth smoke and rue
be, like the clearest of relations, true.
His is the authentic image nothing can mar;
be they from graves, be they from rooms he has known,
he praises bracelet, finger-ring, and jar.