Auguste Rodin, ‘Adam’ (Edmund Gall/Wikimedia Commons)

 

…the tragic pleasure of admiration.

                                                Rodin

He emerges from that stone womb stumbling,

yet still, with rocky sleep in his eyes, a lingering

curl in the toes. Life-struck, he’s cast into

the bronze light of first morning. The wild beauty

of a fig tree seen for the first time, the strange

softness of grass, sharp contrast from the rock

his foot is anchored to. Rodin captured the spastic

flex in the unfolding, the softening of metallic lines

into the run of the calf, the blooming tufts of hair.

He’s the best and the worst of us. The first to feel alone,

the first to cast blame, the last to know the light

of eternal day. His eyes contain both the blank gaze

and the shadow from his brow furrowed

in ugly confusion. Does he feel death in the marrow,

buried in his breath? Does he sense his capacity

for grief, the sunken joy in that first place?

The knowing finger points down. Hiding in the clay,

there is always something holding us back,

a catch in the breath, the muscles never relax. 

John Moessner is the author of Harmonia (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2023). He received his MFA from the University of Missouri–Kansas City. You can find his poems in New Letters, North American Review, and Poet Lore. www.johnmoessnerpoetry.com.

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Published in the February 2022 issue: View Contents
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