Immortality Ode

By Bruce Smith b. 1946 Bruce Smith

Miss Bliss, once I thought I was endless

since father was perpetual in his grade school

of seedlings in cups, the overly loved pets, and recess

while mother was the lipsticked dancing girl

on the Steel Pier who would outstep Hitler.

I was insufferable when I rolled

the Volkswagen bus two times and lived

with the snow chains like costumed jewels

slung over me and the spare rolled

away as in a folktale.

The pact I made in the spinning instant

said in my language of American

boy, Put up or shut up, to God,

the State Trooper who was kind

and spoke of service and punishment

and giving yourself away.

Now, I’m alive through the agency

of iron and contract work and appeals

to the fallen—angel and dusk—

but wet-winged and still without you,

Miss Bliss, who took me inside

where there was an ocean

before which we were children.

That calm, that fear,

that witness of the two-thirds

of everything else.

Source: The Other Lover (2000)

Biography

Originally from Philadelphia, Bruce Smith is the author of several books of poems, including The Other Lover (2000), a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Influenced by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Smith’s poetry moves like jazz, incorporating images and narratives into a startling, musically unified whole. In a 2007 interview, Smith explained his poetry’s aspiration to song: “When the language . . .

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