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Rita Dove: Parsley
Rita Dove reads “Parsley”
Running time: 4 minutes
Parsley
- The Cane Fields
There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp the cane appears
to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General
searches for a word; he is all the world
there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,
we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—
out of the swamp, the cane appears
and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.
The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.
There is a parrot imitating spring.
El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining
out of the swamp. The cane appears
in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.
- The Palace
The word the general’s chosen is parsley.
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave
and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming
four-star blossoms. The general
pulls on his boots, he stomps to
her room in the palace, the one without
curtains, the one with a parrot
in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders
Who can I kill today. And for a moment
the little knot of screams
is still. The parrot, who has traveled
all the way from Australia in an ivory
cage, is, coy as a widow, practicing
spring. Ever since the morning
his mother collapsed in the kitchen
while baking skull-shaped candies
for the Day of the Dead, the general
has hated sweets. He orders pastries
brought up for the bird; they arrive
dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.
The knot in his throat starts to twitch;
he sees his boots the first day in battle
splashed with mud and urine
as a soldier falls at his feet amazed—
how stupid he looked!— at the sound
of artillery. I never thought it would sing
the soldier said, and died. Now
the general sees the fields of sugar
cane, lashed by rain and streaming.
He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth
gnawed to arrowheads. He hears
the Haitians sing without R’s
as they swing the great machetes:
Katalina, they sing, Katalina,
mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows
his mother was no stupid woman; she
could roll an R like a queen. Even
a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room
the bright feathers arch in a parody
of greenery, as the last pale crumbs
disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone
calls out his name in a voice
so like his mother’s, a startled tear
splashes the tip of his right boot.
My mother, my love in death.
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs
men of his village wore in their capes
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed
for a single, beautiful word.
~
Copyright 1992 Rita Dove. From Museum (Carnegie Mellon, 1992).
Note:: “Parsley,” one of Dove’s most overtly political poems, chillingly recounts Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s massacre of thousands of Haitian migrants in 1937. The poem’s name stems from a story claiming that Trujillo determined a person’s origin, Dominican or Haitian—thus, whether they would be killed—based on their pronunciation of the word perejil (“parsley”). — Source: Brittanica
Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for her third book of poems, Thomas and Beulah. Other honors include Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the General Electric Foundation Award, and the Lavin Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. A professor of English at the University of Virginia, Ms. Dove lives in Charlottesville with her husband, the novelist Fred Viebahn.
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Easy to see why she was selected as US Poet Laureate–what a voice, what deep vision.
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Yes, I’ve known Rita since grad school. She has always been a head above the poets around her. Michael Simms
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Incredible and perfect for these times.
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Yes, the poem is perfect and timely.
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As I hear Rita Dove recite her powerful poem to us, with its portrayal of malignant narcissism framed by masterful imagery, for me it echoes what Emily Dickinson writes approvingly: If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know it’s poetry. Parsley takes the top off my skull, especially with Dove’s meliflous reading of such terror.
Lola Haskins’ poem that she provides us as her comment, does some of that too, especially the final phrase: even the ones whose/throats I slit. sing.
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Thanks for peeling back the layers, Jim.
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What a poem, what a poem — how movingly Rita Dove reads it, how important to read and listen to this poem today…
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It really is a powerful poem.
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I’m grateful for the included note that helped place this poem and make it even more powerful. The insane whims of powerful people are chilling to think about.
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Oh yes, we are all at the whims of the people in power. Look at our current president, for example, how he kills thousands of people, wiping out entire cities, on a whim.
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Brutality, apparently will not go out of fashion in our lifetimes. It’s had plenty of opportunities and taken none. Such a perfect poem about its subject, and here I was yesterday at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, that strange white form crouching upon the ghostly, subsumed vessel. We went into the shrine room to see a thousand names carved into white marble, were told of how many siblings died together there, three brothers in one instance and a father and son. We went into the gathering space to peer out of the portals, a petroleum odor abroad, and the most beautiful rainbow slick spreading interminably upon the waters into which we cast beautiful orchid blooms if we pleased, to carry along with our thoughts and prayers and dreams. In the hold among the drowned ones, 300,000 gallons of oil; a quart or two of which daily exsanguinate onto that scrim. We do not finish, like that seeping, we only go on, weeping into this world barely comprehending the substance of life.
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Beautiful writing, Sean. Thank you.
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I want to add that on the walkway back to headquarters, there were markers and information signs all along the way. I didn’t want to read anything after the very moving experience of being out there, but carelessly ran my hand across one to discover it was a diagram of the harbor and its features all written in braille. Not a word otherwise. I wondered to myself if that language could suffice, for what of all this has never instructed us in things we’ve never known the answers of. Blindness such a strange metaphor on the occasion of being in the presence of such sadness.
It’s been an amazing trip— living in this world.
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Brilliant, Sean. Just brilliant.
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Sean, you have a poem here, at least one! Very moving, like Rita’s poem which I have loved since I first read it. Deep compassion and free of any sentimentality in the face of this one brutal action, emblematic of all the brutal actions throughout history and occuring right now.
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OMG, Rita Dove, this is chilling. The portrait of an evil narcissist, with a thirst for killing, the only ‘love’ he ever had was his mother, the ‘others’, those who can’t roll and ‘R’ – whatever makes them the ‘other’ – (As he paces he wonders / Who can I kill today. And for a moment / the little knot of screams is still.) and that first Villanelle is one of the best ever. Haunting in the repetitions. She is in a league of her own.
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Thanks for this reading of the poem, Rose Mary. Michael Simms
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What a beautiful poem, Lola. Thank you!
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This is a gorgeous perfect poem, so much in the world of this one of mine, but better.
The Coup
I offered them my chest
and told them go ahead
but even Gonzales
who hated me the most
could not. How sweetly
habit grows, like mold
on shoes in our hot country.
I told them their own troops,
a prickle of boys, brown hands
slippery on their guns
were loyal to me. And
now. I tell them sing
mouths full of dirt or no,
and even the ones whose
throats I slit. sing.
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