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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Poem-A-Day: En Route by Darcie Dennigan

January 29, 2014
En Route
by Darcie Dennigan


The infant asleep in the trough is a Buddhist. 

This time of year is very, very old. Over eggs, 

that is all we can conclude, us who are asleep, 

who are dreaming this long dream. 

What if this infant could be awoken? 

There is someone in heaven who for centuries 

an infinite number of centuries, has been 

perfecting himself. Is he here now with us, 

watching for a red globe to roll off the tree into 

wretchedness? To pick up the crying infant is to 

teach it trust and love. But to suffer: 

babe-in-the-manger, we will all be 

the dead man if we live long enough. If we are 

even alive. I am not sure that I exist right now, 

actually.  (I have been a word in a book 

I have been a tree 

high, high above the Tuileries!) 

This infant must learn to cry itself to sleep. 

This infant must learn to dream itself awake. 

Please god continue my own dreams into 

infinity: must get glitter glue to spell our names 

on the stockings. No, must awake from this 

world. He is crying. No not "he." Say "it is 

crying." It is snowing. It is crying. This time of 

year is old. The cold and dark: were they 

not made for us to hold the infant against? 

Shouldn't we name ourselves and the things 

we love? (darcie.carl.remy.fiammetta.december) 

Of the six destinies they say to be human is the 

hardest but it is the one I have loved the most. 

Perhaps because I have not suffered enough. 

This time of year might be ancient. Older than 

suffering. If this world were a dream, we would 

speak of it, for the root of dream is noise. Yet! 

The infant is he who is unable to speak... It is 

unspeakable. The infant cries. It pains me. 

Oh brusque intuition, oh illogic answer... 

I will arrive at you.

 
 
 

Copyright © 2014 by Darcie Dennigan. Used with permission of the author.

About This Poem 

"I want you to know I stole the most joyful moment of this poem from Catherine Barnett. I would also like to give you a quote from Jorge Luis Borges's lecture on Buddhism: 'Plotin says that passing from one life to another is like sleeping in different beds in different rooms.' At the end of the lecture, Borges says that Buddhism is the path to salvation for millions of people. But he adds, 'not for me.'" 

 

--Darcie Dennigan 

Most Recent Book by Dennigan





(Canarium Books, 2012)

 

 

 

 

Poem-A-Day
Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.  
 

Darcie Dennigan is the author of two books of poems, most recently Madame X (Canarium Books, 2012). She teaches at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.  


Related Poems
Populating Heaven
by Maureen N. McLane
The Book of the Dead Man (Food)  
by Marvin Bell 
by Lucie Brock-Broido 
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