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Return to Alan Shapiro: An Aesthetics of Inadequacy

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Joy

by Alan Shapiro

.....

What never comes when called.
                                                 What hides when held.
Guest
          most at home where least
                                                 expected. Vagrant
balm of Gilead.
                        What, soon as here,
                                                       becomes
the body's native ground and,
                                             soon as not,
its banishment.
                       Coming and going,
                                                     indifferent,
magisterial.
                  My lovely daughter—
walking me to the car
                                 to say goodbye
the day I left
                    to keep watch at my brother's
bedside—
                 suddenly
                                singing "I
feel pretty, oh so
                          pretty"
                                     as she raised
her arms up in a loose oval
                                         over her head
and pirouetted all along the walk.

Savage
            and magisterial—
                                       the joy of it,
the animal candor of
                                   each arabesque,
each leaping turn and counterturn,
                                                    her voice
now wobbly
                    with laughter,
                                         "And I pity
any girl
            who isn't me
                                tonight."
Savagely beautiful,
                             not so much like
the lion that the camera
                                    freezes
                                                in mid-
pounce, claws
                      outstretched for the stumbling
                                                                   antelope,
as like the herd
                        escaping
                                      that the camera
pans to, zig-
                   zagging,
                                swerving as one,
their leaping strides now
                                     leaping higher,
                                                            faster,
even after,
                 it seems,
                               the fear subsides—
after the fear and
                           the relief
                                         they keep
on running
                 for nothing but
                                        the joy of running,
though
           it could be
                            any one of them
is running
               from its fallen
                                    mother or father,
sister or brother,
                          across the wide
                                                  savanna,
under a bright sun
                            into fresher grass.

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