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By Edgar Bowers

I summon up Panofskv from his bed
    Among the famous dead
To build a tomb which, since I am not read,
Suffers the stone’s mortality instead;


Which, by the common iconographies
    Of simple visual ease,
Usurps the place of the complexities
Of sound survivors once preferred to noise:


Monkeys fixed on one bough, an almost holy
    Nightmarish sloth, a tree
Of parrots in a pride of family,
Immortal skunks, unaromatically;


Some deaf bats in a cave, a porcupine
    Quill-less, a superfine
Flightless eagle, and, after them, a line
Of geese, unnavigating by design;


Dogs in the frozen haloes of their barks,
    A hundred porous arks
Aground and lost, where elephants like quarks
Ape mother mules or imitation sharks—


And each of them half-venerated by
    A mob, impartially
Scaled, finned, or feathered, all before a dry
Unable mouth, symmetrically awry.


But how shall I, in my brief space, describe
    A tomb so vast, a tribe
So desperately existent for a scribe
Knowingly of the fashions’ diatribe,


I who have sought time’s memory afoot,
    Grateful for every root
Of trees that fill the garden with their fruit,
Their fragrance and their shade? Even as I do it,


I see myself unnoticed on the stair
    That, underneath a clear
Welcome of bells, had promised me a fair
Attentive hearing’s joy, sometime, somewhere.


Edgar Bowers, “The Poet Orders His Tomb” from Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). Copyright © 1997 by Edgar Bowers. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Edgar Bowers.

Source: Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997)

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Poet Bio

Edgar Bowers
Edgar Bowers was born in Rome, Georgia, and educated at Stanford University. There he studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters, who influenced Bowers's deft use of rhyme and traditional forms, as seen in the poem, "A Poet Orders His Tomb." This poetic technique, combined with a deep concern for science, society, and art, gained Bowers a small, but influential audience, despite his relatively small output and extended periods of silence. Though open to many varied influences, Bowers often disparaged American poets, looking for mentors among French poets, most notably Paul Valéry. See More By This Poet

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