Canto Transitional 1 (Gluttonous to Lustful)

Canto Transitional 1 (Gluttonous to Lustful)Author(s): John KinsellaSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Fall, 2007), pp. 127-129Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20536848 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:40:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uiowa

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20536848?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Canto Transitional 1 (Gluttonous to Lustful)

Lifting the valley tableau, a mirror

eyeing the swift shade's crossing,

drag of body: hunger, longing,

sight worn past sockets, a favored object worn away and flesh wearing away

with it; and so to crossing up, as red as spectrum will allow, collective memory recognize:

that sun at our shoulder,

scorpions burrowing under lichen

encrusted granite, rose quartz chunks;

beetles' carapaces hang on a thread, and a cushion of green emulsifies stubble

sharp enough to puncture rubber soles.

How quickly you move across the reliquary of invertebrates, a solitary pink and grey

pecking at seed swept onto firebreak:

its curl of beak gurgling with the piston nub of its tongue, husks falling into shade that won't leave it alone,

won't take notice of its irritable twitch

of head or wing, scratching to tear

into light. It's whispered that across the road

127



they invite friends to watch dogs copulating,

getting stuck into it. Between here and there

the remnant York gums, shells of exfoliated

granite bearings, cyclone wire twisted, claws inwards, about the base of older

specimens: uncut grass in there, cauterized

wire where the nylon of the whipper snipper has lashed, broken off, fallen like catechesis

uttered out of habit?you recognize strike,

tussle, and after the snapping, higher revs of the device's motor; fruit on the house trees

has set and fallen?a season away from harvest.

To barrier the outside, to clarify inside property boundaries where loyalty is familiar, custodial, tree lucerne?Tagasaste?planted, walling

in quickly...an earlier resistance brought down

by a flock of rescue sheep, their blackness

culling from a herd of whiteness...

ring-barking tree lucerne to a deciduousness

of shade, unmoved by a strong sea-breeze

cutting up over scarp from concave waters,

driving against fire, heat of an emptied inland.

So, walking hard again, and thinking out loud, our three-year-old marvels at movement

of shade: so slow beneath jam trees

when he's standing beneath or beside foliage, yet vastly different walking in morning,

128



at midday, or evening...; in walking, a wariness pervades?dugites, gwarders, red-back tripwires coming down

from veranda eaves, from old power pole

fence-posts, scorpions under rocks inviting to sit on, turn over idly?a destructive curiosity,

habitats bashed, adapted?scats of silent animals, fullness of darkness

that makes visible a density in loss: fox,

rabbit, cat, field mice, hopping mice, even rare marsupials struggling among York gums, up high; owl pellets.

The child walks free of gluttony and lust, but spray-drift of mosquito poison,

coating storm-fluids, conditions him

for a life of negotiations, tolerance, loss.

The joy of the walk is lost, but we still smile, and amuse him, and share as many names

as we can. Again: "It's so beautiful," he says. A trio of ring-necked parrots darts

up onto the limb of the dead tree semi-arched

towards the driveway: they call with an energy to match his enthusiasm. They depart suddenly: alarmed, joyful, possessed, enraptured?

129



Documents

Canto Transitional 1 (Gluttonous to Lustful)