Against Opulence
By Kimiko Hahn
A glosa with Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain”
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
Yes, in disaster’s aftermath, court
is not royal accommodation,
more, the verb to court,
courting disaster on titanic liners
or inside houses built on stilts
along the salty coasts.
Over the mirrors meant
to reflect the complexion
of statesmen in staterooms
there are shadows of ghosts—
finned and gilled and with
scales that do not measure gold.
And currents cannot wait
To glass the opulent
because more than reflection
there’s refraction. More than
strands of jewels, I see scrawls
—iambic lines drafted in silt,
verses ending in heroic couplet—
on the ocean floor, where after all
The sea-worm crawls—
Still, if I only see the abyssal zone
versus waves of plankton and sun,
volcanic episodes will be missed.
Islands of plastics will swirl,
mid-ocean, unnoticed.
In my compact, I too reflect
grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
Notes:
This piece is part of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize portfolio in the October 2023 issue.
Source:
Poetry
(October 2023)
