A new species of love poem by Cynthia Zarin. The epigraph is from Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, whose main character is a guiding spirit throughout Zarin’s recounting of her own tale of impossible passion in The Ada Poems, her fourth collection.
Late Poem
” . . . a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern.”
I wish we were Indians and ate foie gras
and drove a gas-guzzler
and never wore seat belts
I’d have a baby, yours, cette fois,
and I’d smoke Parliaments
and we’d drink our way through the winter
in spring the baby would laugh at the moon
who is her father and her mother who is his pool
and we’d walk backwards and forwards
in lizard-skin cowboy boots
and read Gilgamesh and Tintin aloud
I’d wear only leather or feathers
plucked from endangered birds and silk
from exploited silkworms
we’d read The Economist
it would be before and after the internet
I’d send you letters by carrier pigeons
who would only fly from one window
to another in our drafty, gigantic house
with twenty-three uninsulated windows
and the dog would be always be
off his leash and always
find his way home as we will one day
and we’d feed small children
peanut butter and coffee in their milk
and I’d keep my hand glued under your belt
even while driving and cooking
and no one would have our number
except I would have yours where I’ve kept it
carved on the sole of my stiletto
which I would always wear when we walked
in the frozen and dusty wood
and we would keep warm by bickering
and falling into bed perpetually and
entirely unsafely as all the best things are
—your skin and my breath on it.
Learn more about The Ada Poems by Cynthia Zarin
Listen to Cynthia Zarin reading “Late Poem”
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