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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MANOKWARI, IRIAN JAYA; IN MEMORIAM, ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Dangling rainbows of skipjack swing Last Line: Of notes, a little twilight music. Subject(s): Evolution; Indonesia; Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823-1913); Dutch East Indies | |||
Dangling rainbows of skipjack swing from poles on shoulders of peddlers. Housewives with crossed arms breathe the cool morning at their open, hill-perched doors. Calling selamat to them softly, I look from road to the blue, calm bay - first harbor of Dutch missionaries, Wallace's fever-misted anchorage. Outriggers ride, water striders at rest; the monthly freighter drowses at the pier. Above, beyond its barren spars, the Arfak Mountains blue horizons burdened with cloud. I turn from sun into an apse of jungle. The path, a century of leaves makes spongy footing, is hung with bare thread-tapestries, a spider crouched in each. As Darwin traced our sandy prints backward from shore into water, Wallace, looking forward, tracked our spoor of animal graves to the future - animals we've sung and painted. Listen. A pair of fantails, wings lost in green domes, drop triads of clarinet notes, globes that plummet air plangent in the jungle silence. A bare beginning of a melody which, beyond the curtain of leaves in the man-made kingdom, Mozart might have played, a grace of notes, a little twilight music. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NO EXEMPTION FOR TOURISTS by KAREN SWENSON ORANGUTAN REHAB by KAREN SWENSON STALKING LEMURS by KAREN SWENSON THE BALINESE WITCH DOCTOR by KAREN SWENSON WEDDING BED IN MANGKUTANA by KAREN SWENSON THAT KIND OF POEM' by KAREN SWENSON |
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