Codicil of the Arrogant Man
I leave you the cold
slab of moon
laid out dark on the table
like the sky,
the moon
no ethereal patient, but bodily
heaven brought low.
No corona. The vet
took to the saw work like a cow
to grass, while the actress
snapped cheesy photos
of the autopsy:
Me with the circular saw
poised over the Sinus Medii.
You peering cautiously beneath the sheet
as if still hardly daring, now the moon was dead,
to check out its backside.
How often we’d teased each other
about pinching its behind,
if only it would ever turn around.
Now solemnity spoiled our fun, even if you cracked
a joke slitting its trousers up the rear.
And the moon split open,
boned and trimmed,
the vet’s hands laying each piece
out on its plate.
I leave you the cow or rather
I am supposed to leave you
that constellation of heifers
who heaved themselves into heaven.
Those black stars.
They didn’t do it.
Or stop to taste the strangers in the car
on their joyride up
the county route ruined
by that roadkill moon.
All the rot and killing
and they didn’t smell a thing.
I leave you the actress, her parka, her girlish
face by the field. Imagine her playing
her well known face
in a documentary cobbled together without original footage.
Besides reenactments, photographs star
with death masks and astrolabes.
Need I mention how dark
her parka was?
– as if she could swaddle all
the light the moon leaked,
and it wouldn’t notice
it had fallen from the sky.
| Ezra Dan Feldman |
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levelheaded: Codicil of the Arrogant Man
In the first eleven lines (including the title) of Ezra Dan Feldman’s poem, “the Arrogant Man,” “the vet,” and “the actress” appear. The definite article “the,” plus the fact that the Arrogant Man is a stock character (Huperephania) in Theophrastus’ The Characters, makes them seem like recognizable stock characters.
We assume, since the poem seems to ask that it be considered a “Codicil,” penned by an “Arrogant Man,” that the poem’s speaker is that man. The vet performs an autopsy of the moon, which is “laid out dark on the table,” transforming the moon into a kind of animal. The situation is made more intricate by the comparison of the vet to another animal—he “took to the saw work like a cow / to grass.” Here of course the vet is meant to be a veterinarian, but he’s referred to only in abbreviated form (“the vet”). A “vet” is a veteran, too, one who is experienced, especially in warfare. Maybe the exaggerated characteristic of the vet, then, is his solder-like, animal (empathetic) confrontation of injury and death.
The actress and the arrogant speaker feature more prominently than this vet. She shows up to document the autopsy with her camera and returns in one of the “I leave you” refrains—“I leave you the actress, her parka, her girlish / face by the field.” We’re then asked to imagine “her playing / her well known face / in a documentary cobbled together without original footage.” The actress is so much a caricature of herself that she plays her own face, synecdochic. The speaker inflates her to superheroic proportions. In the final stanza, the darkness of her parka, he imagines, “could swaddle all / the light the moon leaked, / and it wouldn’t notice / it had fallen from the sky.” The speaker believes in her ability to make gentle the moon’s death.
Now to the arrogant man. What better instance of arrogance than attempting to leave another person AND her belongings to someone else? Not to mention leaving the moon, nor “that constellation of heifers / who heaved themselves into heaven.” His feelings of superior importance lead him to try to pull impossible legal moves. He assumes ownership over things that he can’t own.
Three stanzas of the poem open with the phrase “I leave you,” before the speaker names the things he is presumably leaving behind. Since the implicit to is omitted here (he doesn’t leave to you), it’s easy to feel the draft of these three words alone—“I leave you”—which underscores what can be a very dramatic act (leaving), an act that can grow even more dramatic if the I is a self-important one.
What would allow him entry to an autopsy of the moon (were such a thing doable)? He and his actress, why would he even think their presence would be tolerated? Autopsies are private affairs.
He’s oddly coy when it comes to “you,” who is also present at the autopsy, but isn’t treated in the same way as the vet and the actress. This “you” seems like a specific person who shares an intimate past with the speaker. Perhaps “you” is so real, so tenderly meaningful to the speaker, that he’s dumbstruck.
There’s a barrage of negation in the poem: “no,” “dead,” “spoiled,” “didn’t do it,” “stop,” “ruined,” “roadkill,” “without.” Even the titular codicil hints at the huge wiping out of a life. And maybe the overbearing assumption that we can dictate the manner in which our surroundings continue in our absence is the ultimate arrogance.
– The Editors
