Let Us Prepare
to get beyond the organic
for surely there is something else
to which it is an impediment an opaque pod
What if it is sight that blinds
hearing that deafens
touch that makes us numb?
What if trussed in a jacket of blood
to a rack of bone we smother
in the dungeon of our lungs?
Today we are in our brain
a laboratory
Must we be here
tomorrow?
Are there not
pinnacles
on which to stand
cleanly
without a head?
Between the belly
of the sun and the belly
of the world
must we bounce forever
magnetized generations of the circle?
Let us eat nothing but darkness
refuse our stale orbit
and walk only in sleep
there to descry a crack in the future
and work to widen it
Let us prepare to bare ourselves outside the gibbet-hood
of the world
without excuse of flesh or apology of blood
—
“Let Us Prepare” was published with four other poems by Swenson in the Winter 1962-63 issue of Poetry Northwest. Her bio from that issue reads:
May Swenson had three poems in our wall-to-wall women’s issue, Volume I, Number 3 (in honor of Ruth Pitter); these fabulous five are from her book, To Mix with Time: New and Selected Poems, published by Scribner’s this month.