Peter Gizzi

Monde des Jouets

This is a secret and silent world
worn from abuse and those surfaces
abrading imagination. The patient
world of the abandoned daydream
so gay and corrosive. We have entered
the semantics of useless things.

You whose revelry once understood 
velvet suggested elegance and distinction,
or my ruddy cheeks were more chevalier
than clown or sawdust, din
and clatter, tin cymbal. But today, child, 
you have no joy for yesterday's plaything.
Sumptuous velvet has lost its bloom, 
the rider is now that "funny man," 
his ceaseless chatter.

Now that we have entered the semantics 
of useless things is the toy revolver 
only adopting an attitude of ravage
like so many obscure mandates,
an image of its gender? Or that priss
with parasol, not so much smiling
as wincing to shield itself from the sun.
Old as the world itself, war toy and doll, 
born from necessity to do grown-up work.
We need play, not playthings, we need 
laughter not models to initiate combat or kiss.

And so these objects, their essential value
lost, have ceased to function. No longer
regarded in worlds of sweet attention
they slumber in a dark full of memory
and figure. Now they have become
a fit subject for a poem, to yellow 
on shelves in catalogs, and can be classified, 
mistakenly, for always.

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Peter Gizzi's books include Artificial Heart (Burning Deck, 1998) and Periplum (Avec Books, 1992). He also edited The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 1998). contents | previous