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Monkey Hill
We will sit all day on a
bench in the sun watching the spider monkeys.
It will at moments resemble an
internal Eden.
But we will not know this.
We will think that we are just
taking pictures with our minds.
The male will stand upright and scratch his
silvery-gold chest.
It will sound rough and shameless.
Over and over the
egg of tenderness will break in our hearts
at the sight of the baby spider
monkeys.
For nothing could be more guileless or curious.
The mother will
stand on all fours and stare into space
and we will see by her eyes that all
of this is beyond her,
though she is intelligent she is unable to fathom
this sweet injustice nature has made cling to her back.
And we will wait
for those moments
when out of the concrete slabs piled to resemble a hill
a splendidly squealing chaos of monkeys
rushes, some trespass or crime
in monkeydom,
causing us to cry aloud, Look at that one!
And then also
there will be those moments we are embarrassed
and only through a deliberate
effort
will we not look away as the monkey
reaches backwards to pull at
the indescribable
pink something that dangles from its bottom,
and we
will feel our humanity is endangered
and that our intimate moments might lap
over into the animal world
and our privacies be beheld with such ghastly
frankness.
But no monkey does any one thing for very long.
So soon the
candor will pass.
And gradually the shadows of the trees will touch our
bench
and it will get cool, then uncomfortably cool, and there will be fewer
and fewer monkeys, and no one will be on the opposite bench
with
detached and absorbed expression, and even the thief gulls
will have left
the moat, and we will say these words as we stand; no;
think them: Oh God,
whatever else be true, though nothing is permanent,
may the myth of our
lives be like this memory of monkeys; that real.
bench in the sun watching the spider monkeys.
It will at moments resemble an
internal Eden.
But we will not know this.
We will think that we are just
taking pictures with our minds.
The male will stand upright and scratch his
silvery-gold chest.
It will sound rough and shameless.
Over and over the
egg of tenderness will break in our hearts
at the sight of the baby spider
monkeys.
For nothing could be more guileless or curious.
The mother will
stand on all fours and stare into space
and we will see by her eyes that all
of this is beyond her,
though she is intelligent she is unable to fathom
this sweet injustice nature has made cling to her back.
And we will wait
for those moments
when out of the concrete slabs piled to resemble a hill
a splendidly squealing chaos of monkeys
rushes, some trespass or crime
in monkeydom,
causing us to cry aloud, Look at that one!
And then also
there will be those moments we are embarrassed
and only through a deliberate
effort
will we not look away as the monkey
reaches backwards to pull at
the indescribable
pink something that dangles from its bottom,
and we
will feel our humanity is endangered
and that our intimate moments might lap
over into the animal world
and our privacies be beheld with such ghastly
frankness.
But no monkey does any one thing for very long.
So soon the
candor will pass.
And gradually the shadows of the trees will touch our
bench
and it will get cool, then uncomfortably cool, and there will be fewer
and fewer monkeys, and no one will be on the opposite bench
with
detached and absorbed expression, and even the thief gulls
will have left
the moat, and we will say these words as we stand; no;
think them: Oh God,
whatever else be true, though nothing is permanent,
may the myth of our
lives be like this memory of monkeys; that real.
~ Stan Rice ~
(Singing Yet: New and Selected
Poems)
Poems)
Stan Rice (1942 - 2002) was the author of eight collections of poetry, including Red to the Rind, Radiance of Pigs and False Prophet (published
posthumously, 2003).For many years he was associated with San Francisco
State University where he was Professor of English, Chairman of the
Creative Writing program, and Assistant Director of the Poetry Center.
In 1977, he received the Edgar Allen Poe Award of the Academy of
American Poets for Whiteboy. He was also the recipient of the
Joseph Henry Jackson Award and a writing fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts. Alfred A, Knopf, New York, published a
large-scale monograph, Paintings by Stan Rice in 1997.
at: www.porkopolis.org/art_gal/rice_s.php
Stan Rice paintings are represented in the collections of The Ogden
Museum of Southern Art and The New Orleans Museum of Art. He had a one
person show at the James W. Palmer Gallery, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York. The Art Galleries of Southeastern Louisiana
presented an exhibition of selected paintings in March 2005.
Prospective plans are underway to present exhibitions of Rice’s
paintings at various locations in Mexico.
On December 9, 2002, Stan Rice died of cancer at age 60 in New Orleans
where he lived with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice, and their son,
the novelist Christopher Rice.
Stan Rice paintings are represented in the collections of The Ogden
Museum of Southern Art and The New Orleans Museum of Art. He had a one
person show at the James W. Palmer Gallery, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York. The Art Galleries of Southeastern Louisiana
presented an exhibition of selected paintings in March 2005.
Prospective plans are underway to present exhibitions of Rice’s
paintings at various locations in Mexico.
On December 9, 2002, Stan Rice died of cancer at age 60 in New Orleans
where he lived with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice, and their son,
the novelist Christopher Rice.
https://www.stanrice.com/bio.html