A LONGING

Author(s): Bin Ramke

Source: Conjunctions , No. 65, SLEIGHTS OF HAND: THE DECEPTION ISSUE (Fall/November
2015), pp. 67-68
Published by: Conjunctions
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26412591

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 Bin Ramke
Out of the egg the new
inherits the body, builds new parts,
lives a little. It knows better

than to think. So Mom and I sat

in the sun waiting for Dad
we were moving to a new house
in a new city and I forget
were we happy about it
we looked at a Papilio glaucus
and I asked How long does it live?
Yellow egg green caterpillar brown pupa
we did not know: the caterpillar has a fake face
to look fierce, the pupa forms in a leaf
to look like the tree, the female adult
looks like a different butterfly which is poisonous . . .
which was the better knowledge . . .

Dad returned. The tiger swallowtail drinks nectar

especially of the honeysuckle, Abelia, Caprifoliaceae.
I know better than I knew.

A LONGING
To think that true
which appears unlikely
—W. K. Clifford

I will tell you the story of your life.

Like the butterfly her chrysalis
there on the branch abandoned.

It began in time and ends. It began in space

and ends. It began as a thing and
will end a thing, shriveled and shriven.

I am not walking through a garden as I write

I am not observing the haunted viburnum glistening
under ice because the day is cold in spite of sun

67

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Bin Ramke
shining bluely and burdened. But I would walk
where the old bark broken may not revive—

Schopenhauer said time is uniform, no part

of time differs from any other, like this snow
before we walk . . . but what happens in time

xylem and phloem, today and yesterday

or tomorrow, for that matter

in your time your life with your eyes closed

the images arise and haunt
never the same mind twice

it is snowing in the garden and we are not there.

We can smell the white flowers and the green.
We can smell the ice below.

THEODICY FOR BEGINNERS

The first half of the alphabet

is for known quantities: a is known,
b is known, a + b = x
the second half of the alphabet
is for unknown quantities
solve for x delta y over delta x
as x approaches zero . . .

*
We did watch the cloud-colored moon
against the night-colored night—
is it night also on the moon?
The moon is where night lives
one night every month.

We did watch the sky-colored cloud

that morning from the airport, through
the acres of glass the wall

68

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