Admit
from the start:
next to nothing
is what we know
about the bee.
Some have argued
that the sun cried,
the tears fell,
they took wings,
took heart and went to work.
Others have called this
poetry --
dismissing it
as hatched by men
with their heads
in the moon:
the bee is an ant
promoted for good behaviour,
given wings, a brighter suit
and the key to honey.
Very well.
The debate continues
and I do not know.
The bee is to me
as I must seem to her
a complete mystery.
small engines running on honey
striped angels who fell for sweetness
stars shooting into the corolla of a petalled sun
ABOUT THE POET ~
Ricardo Sternberg was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1948 and moved to the United States with his family when he was fifteen. He received a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Riverside and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Between 1975 and 1978, he was a Junior Fellow with the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His poetry has been published in magazines such as The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry (Chicago), Descant, American Poetry Review, The Virginia Quarterly and Ploughshares. Vehicule Press (Montreal) published The Invention of Honey (1990, republished 1996), Map of Dreams (1996) and McGill-Queen's University Press published Bamboo Church (2003, republished 2006). Cyclops Press released a CD of his readings, Blindsight, in 1998.
