bamboo poem

Bamboo PoemAuthor(s): Dave SnyderSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Winter, 2008/2009), pp. 2-7Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20537053 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 20:47

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Iowa Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:47:15 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uiowa

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20537053?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


DAVE SNYDER

Bamboo Poem

Nothing loves anything more than a panda loves bamboo.

They eat from and live in

bamboo exclusively.

Every morning pandas wake

to hushed leaf-rustle.

In a day the panda will devote

fourteen hours solely to eating bamboo

only two hours for everything else

whinnying, grooming, marking territory, playing, inhaling deeply, barking, performing handstands, and mating

two hours total, ever bamboo-surrounded

I love nothing so much.

Nothing is more

loved than bamboo.

Tragedy is a form

of excess.

Natural forms of excess, blooms, in a species inevitably lead to its doom.

2



Many bamboos bloom only once

a lifetime: flower, fruit, seed, die.

Entire stands have undergone these changes

Scientists cannot tell what triggers loyalty. I am not loved like this.

In the end, seed drifts may be

ankle-deep.

A panda's hands are shaped

specifically to hold bamboo.

They are always empty without bamboo.

In difficult periods when bamboo is scarce

pandas clumsily stomach other grasses, flower bulbs, insects, small mammals.

Pandas digest these foods more efficiently but in every case prefer bamboo.

A preference for something less

staggers logic. Pandas understand.

When a panda brings its mouth to a culm

its intention may be to eat it or just to press

it to it.

Grasses prove incapable of

reciprocity, betrayal, or ardor.



If we could speak with pandas

they would speak only of bamboo,

and would possess eloquence humans rarely achieve.

English would borrow new, more florid adjectives from pandas. Words that wouldn't be but would be like:

wondessorous, cleoquerescent, and radienn?e.

"Bamboo" would come to mean among many things,

elegance, certitude, reverie, balance, and ardor.

During carnal seizure panda Don Juans would whisper

my bamboo.

Approximately, the width and shape of a panda's throat is the same as a bamboo culm.

Pandas cannot speak and they are doomed.

During the 1980s, efforts to increase panda

populations saw breeding programs established in

Beijing, Chengdu, Wolong, and Fuzhou.

Wordlessly, pandas conveyed dissatisfaction with these programs.

Without bamboo, captive pandas are asked upon to eat

apples, milk, and steamed buns.

Males become impotent. Mothers abandon their cubs,

4



their steamed buns.

Disinclination is a major problem in captive breeding.

In some cases, the appearance of blossoms in individuals

forewarns flowering in every other member across the world.

Even if, as rarely happens, a panda cub is born abroad

every panda maintains

Chinese citizenship.

Pandas do not mate for life.

Last year in a Thailand zoo, a traditional Thai

wedding was performed to encourage two pandas to mate.

So far, it has worked.

Outside the zoo bamboo

grows thick and close

culms nodding over walls.

Without: bamboo.

Nothing hates anything more than bamboo hates pandas.

In a day, fourteen hours may be spent

being eaten by a panda.

5



Even in the presence of better food sources,

pandas, whose teeth are designed to crush,

single out

bamboo.

The best theory to date says mass die-off

developed in bamboo as defense

against predators: an entire forest dies together: that is to say, undergoes together

a change: anything that depends on that forest will be abandoned:

seeds drift into a desiccated maw, out a rotted throat.

Love is a war

bamboo is winning.

While bamboo succeeds all over the earth

capable of forming huge forests

there are around 3,000 pandas left in nature.

With these odds pandas should hold a greater interest in mating but they do not.

Instead they reach out slowly to what surrounds them, fit their hand around it, then mouth, then throat, then trust.

I want to tell you the moral of this story

6



but I cannot. Where I am

I see the answers outside

thick and close: the world: this I want

to hold without

my hands are empty.

7



bamboo poem

Documents