Lion Felling a Bull by Robyn Schiff

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 15, 2014   Lion Felling a Bull   Robyn Schiff

I came upon a fragment, one             anterior lion felling                         one anterior bull. I was in a museum so can’t call             it life, but here I felt my life come down the continual downhill grade              of the path from the ancient marble                          quarry the dark marble here was quarried from. First with form             and then with stone, I came in love                         upon a fragment and should have loved the pressure most. I have a              mother and a query. I quarreled with                            my father the day my son was born and am the father now. As a girl I flipped              over my handlebars flying down                          a different hill every time. I had a childhood friend named               Jill and an anti-carjacking                            device called a club I policed myself with by thinking hard of             my membership in and a keen sense of                           the end of belonging. I drove my car into a house, my house into the earth,            and I’m grinding the earth into hell.                        I want to be more true to the material world. The              wild upon the bull, the chisel                          upon the wild. But it’s either true or it isn’t. How can I             be more than what I am. I want to stop                         identifying with the caliper or the marble, the lion, its marble             mane, or the meat the lowing cow watched                        its mate become and be the altering heat again. I           stood before the fragment and asked                       what doesn’t want to be whole? I’ve never found fragmentation as            beautiful as objects that survive the                        fall of civilization intact. Half-lion felling half-bull, I feel pressure             in the forms to conclude; a coming                        storm; electricity in the air; an intention; but             whose? I saw crudeness in the ware the crudeness of something             itself unfulfilled. And then something else                          was exhumed in Athens. All I needed to see was an inch of hindquarter of              lion or bull to love the world to                          its conclusion but a second front entirely is             forming. Mythology is sweet,                           but husbandry is history. The head of another lion               rises out of the gridded pit having                           nothing to do with symmetry. A colossal miscounting of lions felling             a sole bull. Two irreducible                         lions made of the same material as me will come             upon me and the pressure that                         made them makes more of them than it makes of me. The pressure that makes             makes more of them than it ever made of                        me. Out of proportion, out of the quarry, great pressure is forming, a thunder,             I feel a great pressure positioning                         me. It has no regard.            Copyright © 2014 by Robyn Schiff. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Lion Felling a Bull’ is a poem about arrogance. The narrative is autobiographical; I did indeed encounter a fragment that I assumed depicted a symmetrical display of power, but I was wrong. In the poem I tried to express the paradoxical realization of my incomprehension.” —Robyn Schiff   Robyn Schiff is the author of Revolver (University of Iowa Press, 2008). She teaches at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City. Most Recent Book by Schiff   Revolver (University of Iowa Press, 2008) "Rapture: Lucus" by Traci Brimhall "Your Brain Is Yours" by Natalie Lyalin "Red Bank" by Leslie Lewis 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. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038