Poem by Angie Estes

Resurrection Science                    


                        “The rhinoceros of Versailles has died, and you
were not there,” the destinateur wrote
                        in his 1793 letter to what the French call
his destinataire. And as destiny would 
                        have it, frozen tissue samples
from twelve Northern White Rhinos--
                       four times as many as are known
to be alive—remain
                      at the San Diego Zoo. In 2009,
workers on “The Lazarus Project”
                      brought an extinct species back
to life: a Pyrenean ibex was cloned
                      and survived for seven minutes
after birth. Shining his flashlight
                     on the flaking Byzantine frescos
of the cave in Puglia, Tonio explained
                     that what we were seeking was
“the restoration of attachment,” the re-
                     attachment of the past—that to walk
on limestone is to walk on dry
                     water, where shepherds once stacked
the stones of their cottages, trulli,
                    still rising out of the flat ground
like nipples. Because they go on
                    last, at day’s end when the plaster
is nearly dry, their pigments do not
                   fuse with the wet lime, so the eyes
vanish first. After centuries, their white orbits
                   stare like the moon, unimpressed
as Earth’s flaked fresco rolls by.
                  They could believe only in Cézanne 
since he claimed, “Everything we see 
                  disperses and disappears. Nature is always
the same but nothing remains 
                  of it, nothing of what we see.” 
After dozens of paintings,
                  he finally just brushed a leash 
around the shoulders
                  of Mont Sainte-Victoire. It’s how the French
announce someone’s death: la disparition
                 de _______, the disappearance of
_______. In a previous incarnation,
                  layers of leis circled my neck 
at high school graduation, an Elizabethan
                  ruff of orchids, tuberose, plumeria,
and carnations, as if I were
                  Saturn. In Tibetan sky burial, 
the body is left for birds 
                  to feed on, and even the yak that carries it
to the charnel grounds
                 is set free. Remember to tear the lines
from this poem, hang them
                 on the clothesline for 
prayer flags.

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Angie Estes’ fifth book of poems, Enchantée, won the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize. Her previous book, Tryst, was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize from the Poetry Society of America.

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