BPR 42 | 2015
Charles Martin’s most recent poetry collection, Signs
& Wonders, was published in 2011, by the Johns Hopkins University Press. His latest work is a collaborative translation with Gavin Flood of the Bhagavad Gita, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2012.
“...Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, is, doubtless, the only human being who ever joined in the fierce, mad, intoxicating revel of the Dum-Dum. From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms and ceremonials of modern church and state....” — Edgar Rice Burroughs
So there you were, in the confessional
With some old priest attending some new sin,
As I tore strips of meat from a fresh kill,
Then crawled back through the thick legs crowding in,
To scarf the orphan’s share—“Little White Skin,”
Named for my pasty face and hairless pelt.
But I danced beneath the full moon with my kin
In the primeval forest where we dwelt,
Unable to stem the urges that I felt
When we collapsed in a promiscuous heap!
Pardon demanded kneeling, so you knelt,
While I fell into a rich phantasmal sleep
Wherein appeared the lurid, awkward shapes
Of my companions, the anthropoid apes.