Donkey
by Gerald Stern
How God in three religions rode on his back
and one there was a festival and one he
dragged his feet on the ground until the dust
filled his sandals; and what we say is the mane
is hogged and you can fold your fingers around
and through and there are stripes that make him a zebra
though they are muted and he is a Chevy mostly
with a slant V6 and a tufted tail and a strip
in the center of the windshield which since it was
a type of truck it carried two enormous
pouches and died suddenly after a hundred
thousand miles or after a lifetime of burdens
as a donkey does, first looking up for
it was his last piece of affection and he wanted
something more than he got though he was grateful,
and dying they both look up with grass in their teeth
or filthy handkerchiefs in their round metal mouths.
Gerald Stern (1925-2022) is an American master. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1925, Stern himself had no mentors. He grew up in a home without books, a child of immigrant parents, and studied philosophy and political science in college. His first book was published in his 48th year, earning him instant critical acclaim. “I thought you read poetry,” he says, “and, like a spider, you did it from the threads of your own belly. So it made me wait for a long time before I got some success. Decades. But at the same time, it made my poetry, whatever came, me.” When he burst on the scene in the early seventies, The Chicago Tribune Book World anointed Stern “the most startling and tender poet to emerge in America in a decade.” From the start, his poems reflected a deep connection to the natural world and to places and things abandoned. Stanley Kunitz once told him, “You are the wilderness in American poetry.”