Literature, by Fred Chappell

The girls and flowers keep changing into literature until that endless languid age arrives when all the world becomes a picture catalogue of gardens where men and women play at chess, at love, and every animal comes fawning to the hand. Then the spirit must begin once more, untaming everything that it has tamed, forgetting all that it has paid for in blood, until the blazoned phrases melt from the vellum and the gold-leaf initials turn into butterflies and lift off the pages, climbing into space to find the hidden planet all wild rose and chicory. Slow signals are emitted from that far system. The planet throbs in its orbit like a hive of sleepy bees, the seasons settle into an undying summer where poplar leaves slide in the wind like shoals of rainbow trout nibbling the river. It is a world prepared for men, but no one comes, each reader still entranced by the courtly chronicle of his native world, the book that murmurs the secret names of lovers. From “First and Last Words” by Fred Chappell (Louisiana State University Press: $13.95, cloth; $6.95, paper; 64 pp.). Chappell, a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry. His other books include “The Fred Chappell Reader” (St. Martin’s, 1987); “Source,” a poetry collection, and “I Am One of You Forever,” a novel (both LSU Press). 1989 Fred Chappell. Reprinted by permission of LSU Press.