Dominion by Christopher Kempf via Harpur Palate

0

Dominion

“& God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful & multiply, & replenish the earth,
& subdue it.  & have dominion over the fish of the sea, & over the fowl
of the air, & over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’”

- Genesis 1:28

But to the trees we are,
like metaphor, mostly

extraneous, our language,
to them, the breath-

play of peasants.  Picture
this world without us,

you say, the sick planet picked
clean—as by a kind

of divine wind—of ruin
& war.  Of word.  We turn

west on the Redwood Trail late
on a Sunday.  The endangered

sequoias vanish above us
& there is nothing, you say,

or no place the planet
is unaffected.  Its feverish

heaving.  The breathing trees turning
over & over their old

air.  We are
all of us lung.  What

Cabrillo breathed.  What bands
of Ohlone women walked

beside in silence.  I
would be for you

like the railroad the ravager
of all of this.  Would give

vast acreages to make you
immortal.  I am not

in the slightest sorry.  Tonight
I will tie you to the bed—bolted

pinewood—& we
will make the frame whine.  & when

the idea of people
is over, as I hope

it is quickly, I hope
the trees remain.  The language-

less.  The in-
describable night.

 

This poem originally appeared in Harpur Palate and has been reprinted here with permission of the author. 

Christopher Kempf Harpur Palate poemChristopher Kempf is a Ph.D. student in English Literature at the University of Chicago, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.  Recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, his writing has appeared in Gettysburg Review, , and The New Republic, among other places.  More work can be read at his .

More About Harpur Palate  

Did you like Christopher’s poem? Share it!

Comments are closed.