The Infirmament

By Dean Young b. 1955 Dean Young

An end is always punishment for a beginning.

If you’re Catholic, sadness is punishment

for happiness, you become the bug you squash

if you’re Hindu, a flinty space opens

in your head after a long night of laughter

and wine. For waking there are dreams,

from French poetry, English poetry,

for light fire although sometimes

fire must be punished by light

which is why psychotherapy had to be invented.

A father may say nothing to a son for years.

A wife may keep something small folded deep

in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in

resembling the terrible things we believe

about ourselves, a rock comes loose

from a ledge, the baby just cries

and cries. Doll in a chair,

windshield wipers, staring off

into the city lights. For years

you may be unable to hear the word monkey

without a stab in the heart because

she called you that the summer she thought

she loved you and you thought you loved

someone else and everyone loved

your salad dressing. And the daffodils

come up in the spring and the snow covers

the road in winter and the water covers

the deep trenches in the sea where all the time

the inner stuff of this earth surges up

which is how the continents are made

and broken.

Dean Young, “The Infirmament” from First Course in Turbulence. Copyright © 1999 by Dean Young. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/.

Source: First Course in Turbulence (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)

Biography

Poet Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. Recognized as one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today, his numerous collections of poetry include Strike Anywhere (1995), winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Skid (2002), finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Primitive Mentor (2008), . . .

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