Someone saw some clouds
once upon a time. So what?
I can see them, too
—a haiku
But better to have seen them a thousand years ago. I am not being sentimental. I like plumbing as much as anyone, and I know the more pollution, the more brilliant sunsets. But the first poems, you could write about anything. Day turning into night a real phenomenon, a mouth and another mouth. The first poems had no metaphors because nothing was like anything else yet.
The kiss was a courting ritual involving, what else, food. A capybara feeding a berry to another capybara, baby birds, wolves translating deer. The first kisses were a promise of future fish, future strawberries: they were symbols, poems. What we want are practical morsels. Let’s nourish the fuck out of each other, a lover says. Hungry, we say, for anything we desire.
The first poems were reports. The world was new and you only wanted to factcheck what you saw: are clouds white to you? White as pillowcases? White as teeth? Does billow mean the same to you as to me? How does a frog go? Is the sea far away or no distance at all? Does the moon look sad to you tonight as well? And every night?
Why are there so many nature poems? I asked an English professor once. Well, there are just as many city poems, she said. She meant: you see what you want to see.
The painters in the caves at Lascaux were saying, bison exist bison exist. Not nostalgizing or vision boarding: just stating the facts. Once upon a time, the facts were enough.