For the Scribe PDF
Preview For the Scribe
for the scribe Ed Ochester, Editor for the scribe David Wojahn univErsity of pittsburgh prEss Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2017, David Wojahn All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6454-4 ISBN 10: 0-8229-6454-6 Cover art: 18th Century Ivory Hornbook from England, courtesy the Library of Congress Cover design by Joel W. Coggins For Noelle, Jake, and Luke And for Ed Ochester For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. The Cro-Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks. The sportsman who shot the last pigeon thought only of his prowess. The sailor who clubbed the last auk thought of nothing at all. But we, now that we have lost our pigeons, mourn their loss. Had the fu- neral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us. In this fact, rather than in Mr. DuPont’s nylons or Mr. Vannever Bush’s bombs, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts. Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to a Pigeon” Many shades of the departed are occupied solely in licking at the waves of the river of death because it flows from our direction and still has the salty taste of our seas. Then the river rears back in disgust, the current flows the opposite way, and brings the dead drifting back into life. But they are happy, sing songs of thanksgiving, and stroke the indignant waves. Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavio Notebooks Contents i. My Father’s Soul Departing 5 Extinction Event: A Cache of Photos of the Last Ivory-Billed Woodpecker 7 Extinction Event: Two-Minute Film of the Last Tasmanian Tiger 10 Atahulpa 12 Bivalve 15 Briefe Historie of the Noose in the Colonie of Virginia 18 Give Orange Me Give Eat Orange Me Eat Orange Give Me Eat Orange Give Me You 28 Canis Familiarus 31 ii. Elegy: Robot Folding Laundry 37 Absolute Rhythm 39 For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 BC 42 Nineteen Eleven Blues 45 Extinction Event: Decoy Birds 50 Study Skins 53 Sinatra: The Concert at Pompeii, 1991 56 Body Politic: To Ezra Pound in Purgatory 59 Anniversary Poem 69
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