Her Palm, Her Apotheosis

There—past the ghost of the carpet,
an inch from the tasseled fringe, an inch

from the froth of the wave
that plashed expressly

west of Asia; here—
in her isolate room,

in a permanent
pot of terra cotta, its imperial fronds

outstretched, unfurled
in a fanning of afternoon sun, this is absolutely

the absolute palm. She sees
nothing else, no one else sees

the palm that she becomes, being
in a fanfare of vanishing, sun.




From Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove Press, 2003). Copyright 2003 by Timothy Donnelly. Reprinted with the permission of the author.