Goofer-Dust

By Thomas Lux b. 1946 Thomas Lux

(dirt stolen from an infant’s grave around midnight)

Do not try to take it from my child’s grave, nor

from the grave

of my childhood,

nor from any infant’s grave I guard—voodoo, juju, boo-hoo rites

calling for it or not! This dust, this dirt, will not

be taken at dawn or noon

or at the dusky time,

and if you approach

this sacred place near midnight,

then I will chop,

one by one, your fingers off

with which you do your harm. Goofer-dust: if you want it,

if you need it, then

erect downwind from a baby’s grave

a fine-meshed net

and gather it

one-half grain, a flaky mote, an infinitesimally small fleck

of a flake at a time

and in such a way

it is given to you

by the day, the wind, the world,

it is given to you, thereby

diminishing the need to steal

this dirt displaced by a child

in a child’s grave.

Source: The Cradle Place (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004)

Biography

Acclaimed poet and teacher Thomas Lux began publishing haunted, ironic poems that owed much to the Neo-surrealist movement in the 1970s. Critically lauded from his first book Memory’s Handgrenade (1972), Lux’s poetry has gradually evolved towards a more direct treatment of immediately available, though no less strange, human experience. Often using ironic or sardonic speakers, startlingly apt imagery, careful rhythms, and . . .

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