Robin Coste Lewis, American poet, artist, and scholar, born 1964, known primarily for her debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation’s history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974.
from THE ARK: SELF-PORTRAIT AS APHRODITE USING HER DRESS FOR A SAIL
Robin Coste Lewis
xxix
Even light runs away. Even stars. Even the sun—they say—
hides here (to sleep for half the year), only rising
from bed to sit on the horizon just an hour each day
and sip a cup of black coffee. The animals, too,
all clamber to the top—a pulsing crown of endless
birds and whales—and sleep, and give birth.
Even glaciers, calving icebergs, contract here undisturbed.
Everything trying to run away from us—everything
trying to find rest—the planet’s crest a haven, bearing all
the runners’ weight. Maybe this is what Einstein felt: the Earth’s heft
making a curved blue dent in a bed of space—the globe
a speckled robin’s egg, cradled inside a nest of tinnient darkness.
xxx
Or perhaps—perhaps—I am just an upturned tree, all my roots earth
laden and bare. Perhaps I fell over so I could worship at the altars of birds.
Or I am a harlequin waterfowl, speckled—black-white, black-white—
hiding safely in day or night. My eyelids are made of feathers
so dark they throw off an emerald sheen. And here I am—still—at home,
bobbing on top of this endless white sea, batting my lashes
toward every beacon—on any remaining shore—ignited
and burning brightly throughout all the black worlds.