A new poem by Calvin Smith.

Cradle
after Hamad Butt

It is 18 yellow glass bulbs
held up together with metal wire

and filled with chlorine gas. What more
is there to say?

Outside,
I focus on the still nimbostratus, and sit

shivering in the car,
leaving the door open. Why is it

that all these separate footsteps
form a pattern? Like a light

rain,
or a kind of concerted drumming. Origin

of dance, this carpark. The gesture preceding
sound, preceding music:

the net of people. And the same thing with the mouth,
preceding sound: all poetry

being really only for the mouth,
like a kind of enactment.

I want to be able to say the words
damp flowers

and mean only the movement, in the mouth,
from the voiced dental plosive

through to the voiceless bilabial plosive
through to the movement after that

as the lips, at the start of flower,
seem to release the tongue again

and the vowels open freely
in a kind of wave. Damp

flowers. Tulip
bulbs. Stamen. Is this the closest we get, really,

to a thing itself? This movement?
Language

only as a kind of bolus?
Everything needs to be enacted.

Those yellow plastic
bags, there, on the concrete,

slowly
colliding in the wind—

they are an enactment.
And so is the rain.

And a forehead resting
against another forehead.

And a hand placed
against the small of the back.

You step out of the car and you say
damp

flowers,
and let the gesture

compass
itself.

I leave the door open
to get a little rain,

that’s why I leave the door open.

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