Wasps' Nest
By Michael Schmidt
It was the fruit I wanted, not the nest.
The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
and with it came the heart, and in my hand
the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones
awoke and did their painful business.
I let the city drop upon the stones.
It split to its deep palaces and combs.
It bled the insect gold,
the pupa queens like tiny eyes
wriggled from their sockets, and somewhere
the monarch cowered in a veil of wings
in passages through which at evening
the labourers had homed,
burdened with silence and the garden scents.
The secret heart was broken suddenly.
I, to whom the knowledge had been given,
who was not after knowledge but a fruit,
remember how a knot of pains
swelled my hand to a round nest;
blood throbbed in the hurt veins
as if an unseen swarm mined there.
The nest oozed bitter honey.
I swaddled my fat hand in cotton.
After a week pain gave it back to me
scarred and weakened like a shrivelled skin.
A second fruit is growing on the tree.
Identical—the droning in the leaves.
It ripens. I have another hand.
Michael Schmidt, "Wasps’ Nest" from New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Michael Schmidt.
