The Truth of Poetry

If you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
—Marianne Moore

At the Philadelphia Zoo, it is true I saw the Galapagos
      Tortoises copulating: his gigantic shell riding on top
of hers, his leathery neck
      straining out as far as it could in a tight erection of muscles, eyes
           bulging out; her head recessed, eyes
           lidded in the shell. They were

a pair of opposites—sculptural they were so still and all the human
      eyes upon them—so still. Yet if I don't tell who brought me over to
that brightly lit glass, would this
      real zoological garden have imaginary tortoises
           in them, would it remain a place
           for the genuine? Doesn't

the genuine include my niece, sixteen, with her new girlfriend, embracing
      watching rapt ("She looks like she doesn't like it.") who pulled me over
on the first day she came out?
      With my niece and her friend—I could see there would be no "on top of" no strain-
          ing in to tap the moist egg but
          a lying beside, neck-to-

neck, or lips-to-lips. And what of the rawness? Doesn't it rely on their
     fascination (they stood at that window for twenty minutes)
          and my fascination for them?

Copyright © 2004 Sharon Dolin All rights reserved
from Kenyon Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission