When the nomad’s gonads came under scrutiny
Ganymede’s gametes were also examined


Sexting was considered as barely communicating
At least inside the chamber that was made of amber

Later the chamber was found in shambles
Resembling a daffodil-covered duck

The duck was a naïve conversationalist and something of an alarmist
          Equanimity was the goal of all those sitting under a parasol

Rembrandt liked to gallivant around Leiden
Where Spinoza had also found enlightenment
The two may have met walking along the banks of the Rijn
In Leiden where the Rijn widens

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede was discovered and so named by Galileo just 25 years before Rembrandt painted the unwilling mythical boy being kidnapped by Zeus, who was Jupiter, who was the eagle.


Ganymede was dragged to Mount Olympus, the heavens, to be in charge of moisture and rain and to be Zeus’s lover. In Rembrandt’s painting the chubby and clearly unhappy boy is seen with a long stream of urine flowing from his penis as he is carried off in the eagle’s grasp.

*

When the eagle and the nomad
Came along with the boy, their gonads came along with them

Under certain pleasant conditions Ganymede painted
painted

became enlightened

Considered sexting a naïve form of conversation
barely communicating
at least inside
inside the goal
of the chamber that was also a bar

later the duck named Amber
Later when Rome came to shambles
resembling a parasol
Resembling a bar
Daffodil-covered duck was
Covered duck the earth
Duck the duck the
Duck was made of
Naive conversation and discovered
Conversing
and discovered by
Something of urine just as an eagle, a beaver, and a beagle walked into a bar.


The bar was not very far.


As far as the eye could see there was matter. Stuff.
Incapsulated in this matter, life found itself to exist—to be.


Inflating existence to the sum total of reality.

Or why should there be something instead of nothing?

Or are we what we choose ourselves to be?

*

Anne Tardos, French-born American poet, is the author of ten books of poetry and several performance works. Her writing is renowned for its fluid use of multiple languages and its innovative forms. Among her recent books of poetry are The Camel's Pedestal (BlazeVOX, 2017); I Am You [first US edition] (BlazeVOX, 2016); NINE (BlazeVOX, 2015); Both Poems (Roof, 2011); I Am You (Salt, UK, 2008); and The Dik-dik's Solitude (Granary, 2003). She is the editor of three posthumous books of poetry by Jackson Mac Low, Thing of Beauty (California, 2008), 154 Forties (Counterpath, 2012); and The Complete Light Poems [with Michael O'Driscoll] (Chax, 2015). A Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Tardos lives in New York.
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