Christina Misite: Loosely Translated
Deinotherium giganteum: enormous
terrible beast, elephantine
mammal whose nasal cavity
might have been the socket of a single, giant
eye. The ancient preoccupation
with largeness: identifying
what was great enough to build
with stone, to rope
arrangements of earth
that from hundreds of feet up
show us dendrites and quipu, impossibly
sharp lines and angles.
We still read bones
for the story: of protoceratops,
of a child’s broken ankle
at age seven. Not such a far leap
from stories of Cyclops
and griffins, priests lighting the way
through bone grottoes, a Greek farmer hiding
a femur in his drawer, holding
it to his cheek, to his own leg, this
smooth white stuff of monsters and heroes.
Tags: Christina Misite, Contributors 95, Poetry, Poetry 95
