United States, (b.1971)
Chimbu Wedding
- When the villagers stake out a hundred pigs
- and two men wade in with clubs,
- watch how they float, cold as light out of heaven,
- above the scene. When the pigs scream
- and buckle with their skulls caved in,
- remember that not one thing in this world
- will be spared. Not one leaf. Not one
- hair on a child’s head. See the women
- hauling rocks to the fire-pits,
- the boys kneeling to collect blood
- in banana leaves, and think of St. Peter’s
- vision: cloven-hoofed creatures descending
- on a sheet, the sky saying “Take, eat.”
- Learn to sit in the smoke with hunger sated
- as children play with bladders they’ve inflated
- like balloons. Learn a new language
- for fellowship, and when you walk home
- through the fields see if you can translate
- the gloam-wrapped mountain’s whisper
- as Come. Then, if there is a place
- prepared for the saints, you will know
- which way to turn at the crossroads.
- You will not trouble the angel at the garden
- gate for a way past her sword. You will
- not remember what blood washed you clean.
© Aaron Baker
Poetry. Vol. CLXXIX, No. 6, March 2002.
Poetry. Vol. CLXXIX, No. 6, March 2002.
About the Poet
Aaron Baker, United States (b.1971), is a poet and teacher. He spent his childhood in a remote part of the Chimbu Highlands in Papua, New Guinea, where his parents were missionaries.
He is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He holds a B.A. from Central Washington University and was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, which granted him an M.F.A. Baker’s work has been published in the Potomac Review and the Blue Moon Review. Hi first published book of poetry is
Mission work (2008). [DES-07/18]