Dirt Being Dirt
The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly walking
straight into it, shirtless, you can see where the flames have
foliaged—here, especially—his chest. Splashed by the moon,
it almost looks like the latest proof that, while decoration is hardly
ever necessary, it’s rarely meaningless: the tuxedo’s corsage,
fog when lit scatteredly, swift, from behind—swing of a torch, the lone
match, struck, then wind-shut…How far is instinct from a thing
like belief? Not far, apparently. At what point is believing so close
to knowing, that any difference between the two isn’t worth the fuss,
finally? A tamer of wolves tames no foxes, he used to say, as if avoiding
the question. But never meaning to. You broke it. Now wear it broken.
Copyright © 2017 by Carl Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 6, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I think this poem is circling the idea of refusing to change the self, even when it’s understood as deeply flawed, given that we have to believe in something…”
—Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips’ most recent books are Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007–2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022). His numerous honors include the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets and Writers, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Phillips served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2011. He is currently a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.