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Epergne
������������������������ after Mark Doty I am looking for epergne when I find it, Sunday morning ���in my Webster's Unabridged between ensorcell (what desire does to the brain) ���and ensphere � what we think the head does to the spirit, ���though it might well be the opposite� the soul ensphering the body, the body ���meant to contain only what it could, a tenth, of its guiding spirit, the rest ���streaming continually out� the way light illuminates the lampshade and spills over the edges� ���But the word that stops my search for epergne is ensoul: ���where did they find a being without one� what made it necessary to invent a word ���for such a concept? Someone once without soul� a body, a bleak house waiting for that happy family of four? (What a parade of ecclesiasts must have ���applied for the job�here, no here, let my god be your soul and inspiration....) Is it something slipped ���to the baby just before birth or in the slap just after (the soul so deeply asleep it needs slapping awake)? ���Definition two "to endow with a soul" is what awes me ���(perhaps we're every color and shape of soulless vase awaiting water and blossom, and only a saintly few so graced) ���but what stops my breath is "1. to take or put into the soul" as if not the body ���but the soul were a receptacle that could be filled with anything�daisies or roses, trash or ashes. I'd want ���to be exquisitely careful what I put or allowed put in there� ���another job perhaps, for the administers of God. When I think of it, I've had or assumed ���scant control over what I've allowed in or what's been tossed in to my soul. ���I have been that object, the epergne I was looking for� that sectioned silver ornamental stand or crystal dish at the table's center ���meant for people to put food in or take food from�I have not done what the poets have done ���which is to give objects or words a soul�a variation on idolatry�or one of the myriad forms of grace? ���What the poets have done is to give death a soul, which I have not done not out of humility, but fear: ���once death has soul, if death is the mother of beauty what mercies or cruelties are not possible? �1998 by April Ossmann First published by The Spoon River Poetry Review |
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