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    • May 2013

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Ink-black, but moving independently   

across the black and white parquet of print,   

the ant cancels the author out. The page,   

translated to itself, bears hair-like legs   

disturbing the fine hairs of its fiber.

These are the feet of summer, pillaging meaning,   

destroying Alexandria. Sunlight is silence   

laying waste all languages, until, thinly,   

the fictional dialogue begins again:   

the page goes on telling another story.

Mary Barnard, “Fable of the Ant and the Word” from Collected Poems (Portland: Breitenbush, 1979). Used by permission of the Estate of Mary Barnard.

Source: Poetry (February 1944).

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This poem originally appeared in the February 1944 issue of Poetry magazine

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• The Man with the Plough
  by Israel Newman
• X-Ray
  by Jessica Nelson North
• Bird Haven, Morning
  by Jessica Nelson North

• February 1944 Table of Contents
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More about this poem

Biography

Mary Barnard was born in Vancouver, Washington and attended Reed College where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1932. Her works include A Few Poems (1952), The Mythmakers (1966), Three Fables (1975) and Nantucket Genesis: The Tale of My Tribe (1988). She was awarded Poetry Magazine’s Levinson Award in 1935, the Elliston award for her book Collected Poems (1979), the Western States Book Award in 1986 for her book Time and . . .

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Poems by Mary Barnard

• Crossroads
• Encounter in Buffalo
• Fawn
• Height Is the Distance Down
• Ondine

• More poems by Mary Barnard (8 poems)
  • Playroom
  • Remarks on Poetry and the Physical World
  • Shoreline

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Nature, Arts & Sciences, Summer, Reading & Books, Animals

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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