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Judson Mitcham
Explanations
A boy holds a blown glass sparrow in his hand
and can’t resist testing one finger aginst
a clear, fragile wing. When it gives,
the child looks up at his mother. As if
to revise what has happened, he explains:
he didn’t press hard enough to snap it. The crippled
figure is to blame.
And
when Nietzsche went insane,
when he buried his bushy face deep in the neck
of a horse whipped hard in the street, of course
there was someone to haul out the photograph
of Nietzsche himself hitched up to a cart
driven by the woman he had loved, the young
Salome wielding a whip.
I
remember
Jesus’ explanation to his puzzled disciples
of his speaking in parables. Otherwise, he said,
the heathen would understand too, and they
would also be saved. I have always believed
Jesus had a zany sense of humor.
Consider
the way we are taught and defeated, at once,
when a thought angles back on itself,
as when Plato alleges that Socrates lies
with every single word from his mouth, and then
Socrates owns up, holding, with a smile,
that Plato has spoken the truth.
I
recall
my son and his best friend, each one lost
in his own loud monologue, rolling their battered
matchbox cars down the driveway.
My son said, “History can start any time.”
And his friend fell silent, appearing to ponder
how history is born,
then shook his head yes, as if something were settled,
as though he had understood fires, freak wrecks,
leukemia and early, slow death well enough
to start off walking down the hill, not saying
just anything he happened to think of.
“Explanations” first appeared in our Winter
1988 issue, received a Pushcart Prize, and was reprinted in The
Pushcart Prize XIV: The Best of the Small Presses (1989–1990).
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