Another poem from Teju Cole, in response to this.
For you shall be in league with the stones of the field
and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.
—Job 5:23
The hand emerges
from the pocket
on its own, its splodge
of low brown hills
a keloid map of how
I’d failed to heal.
Gnarled, tidal wind:
a leaf storm hassles the air.
Argumentative clouds.
This hand is strange to me.
I’d stretched it out
as makeshift landing gear,
like one reaching out
for help, or to bless,
and badged it instead
with dirt and blood,
red archipelago
from base of thumb to wrist.
The dog had stopped
and looked at me
with his mangy face,
and slowly turned away.
I left a part of myself there;
the road rehearsed itself in me.
“They can smell
your fear, you know.”
Yes, I’d thought of that.
This gift of theirs
was what I feared,
dull humanity unmoored
from the strangeness of a dog.
Cousin, I’ll go chasing trees,
wade ankle deep
in the soft coin they mint,
spend hours tailing memory,
a dog on scent,
a child in the creek
of full human being,
trampling prodigal bounty:
hand-sized leaves
—burlap, silk, damask—
weeping off the branch like sails,
blush-hued, wine-hued, gold:
healing scars that
protect the stones,
eyelids for their perfect eyes.
Let us agree to pray
for each other:
that the tidal wind
settle us into a rightness
and recreate from these faults
and fears, fitter selves,
as lean years follow fat.
© Teju Cole 2008
