1400, a poem by Albert Goldbarth

1400

Saps, and the anal grease of an otter, and pig's blood,

and the crushed-up bulbous bodies of those insects

that they'd find so thickly gathered on barnyard excrement

it makes a pulsing rind, and oven soot, and the oil

that forms in a flask of urine and rotting horseflesh,

and the white of an egg, and charcoal, and the secret

watery substance in an egg, and spit-in-charcoal

in a sluggish runnel of gray they mixed

with the harvested scum of a bloated tomato,

and steamed plant marrows beaten to a paste,

and orange clay, and auburn clay, and clay bespangled

with the liquid pearl of fish scales stirred in milt,

and suet, and glue boiled out of a hoof,

and ash, and grape-like clusters of fat grabbed

out of a chicken carcass and dried in the sun

until it became inert and yet still pliable, and lime,

and the pulp of the cherry, and the pulp of the cherry

immersed in egg, and coral in a powder,

and silver flake, and fig, and pollen, and dust, and beeswax,

and an iridescence scraped with infinite care

from the wings of hundreds of tiny flying things,

and salted iridescence, and human milk, and ores,

and gall, and stains expressed from teas, and gobs of squeeze-off

from the nettings of cheese, and rouge, and kohl,

and luster, and oyster, and lees: and so from these

they made their paints: and then

their Gods and their saints.

–Albert Goldbarth (born 1948)

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