Another poem by Deborah Digges [by Moira Egan]

I am so sad to hear of the death of Deborah Digges. She was one of my professors at Columbia; in fact, she was the instructor of my very first graduate workshop. Over those months, she made a couple of infinitely useful comments about my work, things I still sometimes think about when writing, and certainly when teaching. Another thing she often did was to credit the "source" of a particular assignment or prompt or way of looking at a poem. "This came from Larry Levis," or "This is what Gerry Stern said about..." I think it's valuable to pass that information on to students, to let them know they're part of a continuum of poets and teachers.

I always loved her poem "My Amaryllis," which first appeared in Ploughshares and then in The Best American Poetry 1992 (edited by Charles Simic). Here it is.

My Amaryllis

by Deborah Digges

 

So this is the day the fat boy learns to take the jokes

by donning funny hats, my Amaryllis,

my buffoon of a flower,

your four white bullhorn blossoms like the sirens

in a stadium through which the dictator announces he's in love.

Then he sends out across the land a proclamation—

there must be music, there must be stays of execution

for the already dying.

That's how your pulpy sex undoes me and your seven

leaves, unsheathed. How you diminish

my winter windows, and beyond them, the Atlantic.

How you turn my greed ridiculous.

Now it's as if I could believe in having children after forty,

or, walking these icy streets, greet sullen strangers

like a host of former selves, so ask them in, of course,

and listen like one forgiven to their crimes.

Dance with us and all our secrets,

dance with us until our lies,

like death squads sent to an empty house, put down,

finally, their weapons, peruse the family

portraits, admire genuinely the bride.

Stay with me in this my exile

or my returning, as if to love the tyrant one more time.

O my lily, my executioner, a little stooped, here,

listing, you are the future bending

to kiss the present like a sleeping child.

RIP DD.  

[image from Flower Gardening Made Easy]