Saint Stephen’s Day with the Griffins

By Henri Cole b. 1956 Henri Cole

for Janet and Christopher

Half-eagle, half-lion, the fabulous

animal struts, saber-clawed but saintly,

a candlewicked ornament dangling

from our rickety sugar pine. Butternut

pudding in our bellies. His reindeer

and sleigh hurried here and gone—thank God

for us childless folks. Almost: the lovelocked

Griffins on the sofa, sockfooted, hearing

gas and a kiddy heart in her tummy—

a life more imaginary than real,

though one is dazzled by gold that fills

the egg unbroken. We feed her crumpets

and listen again: The lamb’s a hungry

bugger, even snug from earth’s

imponderable fury. Tomorrow, in a spurt

by jet I’m home. Clumsy as a puppy

I’ll scale the flightstairs into the nosecone,

luggage banging at my sides, enter the egg-

shaped cabin and await the infrared

climb toward space. Tell me one

thing true? If I could count the way

things slip from us: Mother’s fur gloves,

Sunday’s benediction, the dead gone before us,

love’s rambler on the prairie—all displaced

as we buckle in our shuttle,

jetbound on a screaming runway,

gravity pulling at us castaways,

more mammal than bird, subtle

leg-weary griffins made manifest,

arrowing towards home. How do we

ignore it: the attenuated being

of our age, the bittersweet collapse

of dominoes mooned around our pine?

Withered with hatred from his quarter,

Saint Stephen even at death rolled mercifully over

in high holiness. Sonless, wifeless, nine

thousand feet from land, I roll the lozenge

on my tongue, youthful habit for ache

of any kind, parting a survivor (Wait!),

love rescuing me from the fringe.

Source: The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989)

Biography

Born in Fukuoka, Japan, and raised in Virginia, poet Henri Cole grew up in a household where French, Armenian, and English were spoken. He earned a BA at the College of William and Mary, an MA at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and an MFA at Columbia University.

In an essay on the influence of Hart Crane’s poetry on his own early development as a poet, Cole speculates on the possibility that “the pain of unsanctioned . . .

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