Agni

A Primer for Those Who Have Dealings with the GodsAuthor(s): Jordan SmithSource: The Agni Review, No. 24/25, Fifteenth Anniversary Issue (1987), p. 103Published by: AgniStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23008279 .

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Jordan Smith

A Primer for Those Who Have Dealings with the Gods

Say first the cat is stretching in the sun,

Kneading her paws. The low sun streaks the table, Gilds the loom, the room where work is done. Tell plainly what you see, the stable

Household, things that are the sunlight's altars, Unaltered in their worship, heretical In constancy. This, for the gods, is faltering. They love what changes: rhetoric,

The forms of force. They take nothing on faith. Think of the architecture of their temples,

Space rounding the stone pillars like a lathe, Festivals fading on the lintels.

These are the slim margins they reserve

For us. We are the stage-set for their play

Of metamorphoses. They are all nerve—

Impulse and loosening, the sway

Of air among the branches in your yard, A slipping knot of craft. When they have come, Offer what you can least afford, a shard, Some loved thing. Show what can't be undone.

103

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 21:24:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions