Eat cabbage
The Cabbage
You have rented an apartment.
You come to this enclosure with physical relief,
your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark,
the hall bulb burned out, the landlord
of Greek extraction and possibly a fatalist.
In the apartment leaning against one wall,
your daughter's painting of a large frilled cabbage
against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars.
The eager vegetable, opening itself
as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage
language of the meanings within meanings;
while the points of stars hide their massive
violence in the dark upper half of the painting.
You can live with this.
I don’t know why this poem struck me when I read it today. Perhaps because I am living in an apartment this month while teaching. Perhaps I am hungry for cabbage. Perhaps I need to find meanings within meanings. Perhaps I just needed to hear the last line.
