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Mind | Body

By Gregory Djanikian b. 1949 Gregory Djanikian

How do they survive, riven

as they are, the one undoing

the other's desire?

Tell the body to outrun

the mind, and the mind smirks,

whispering too loudly

this way this way,

blocking all the exits.

And the body, luxurious

sensualist by pool side or in bed,

doesn't it hear the mind's

impatient machinery ticking

it's time it's time?

And only in our mind's eye,

as we're fond of saying,

someone else's body leaping nimbly

in jetés of thought, or revealing

to us Act V, scene iii

in one gestural flourish,

body and mind beautifully

synchronous.

Oh, the mind is eely, slipping

out of its puzzle boxes,

loving its own wit.

And the earnest body: speak of it

with the least irony, and already

you've begun to unnerve it.

Better to let them have their way,

forgetting about them both

until they meet again sometime

as if for the first time

in library or steam room

ready to shake hello

or lead you to whatever door there is

and always the two sets of stairs.

Source: Poetry (April 2000).

Biography

Gregory Djanikian’s collections include So I Will Till the Ground (2007), Years Later (2000), Falling Deeply into America (1989), and The Man in the Middle (1984). His poems have also appeared in numerous magazines and journals, such as Poetry, the Nation, and the American Scholar, as well as on television, when he was featured on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

His work explores, among other things, the private and public . . .

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