The Iowa Review
Volume 38
Issue 3 Winter 2008-2009
2008
Bamboo Poem
Dave Snyder
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Snyder, Dave. "Bamboo Poem." The Iowa Review 38.3 (2008): 2-7. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol38/iss3/3
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Article 3
DAVE
SNYDER
Bamboo Poem
loves anything
Nothing
more than a panda loves bamboo.
They eat from and live in
bamboo exclusively.
Every morning
pandas wake
to hushed
leaf-rustle.
In a day the panda will devote
fourteen hours solely to eating
only
two hours
grooming,
whinnying,
inhaling
for everything
deeply,
two hours
marking
barking,
bamboo
else
territory, playing,
handstands,
performing
and mating
total, ever bamboo-surrounded
I love nothing
so much.
is more
Nothing
loved than bamboo.
Tragedy is a form
of excess.
Natural
forms of excess,
in a species
inevitably
blooms,
lead to its doom.
2
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bamboos
Many
bloom
only once
a lifetime:
Entire
flower, fruit, seed, die.
stands have undergone
these
cannot
Scientists
I am not
triggers
loyalty.
like this.
loved
In the end,
tell what
changes
seed drifts may
be
ankle-deep.
are shaped
to hold bamboo.
A panda's
hands
specifically
bamboo.
They are always empty without
In difficult periods when bamboo
is scarce
pandas clumsily stomach other grasses,
flower bulbs, insects, small mammals.
Pandas
but
digest
these
foods more
efficiently
in every case prefer bamboo.
A preference
staggers
for something
less
logic. Pandas understand.
a panda brings its mouth
to a culm
its intention may be to eat it or just to press
When
it to it.
Grasses
incapable of
betrayal, or ardor.
prove
reciprocity,
Ifwe
could
they would
and would
speak with
pandas
speak only of bamboo,
possess
eloquence
achieve.
rarely
humans
English would borrow new, more
that wouldn't
from pandas. Words
wondessorous,
to mean
come
reverie,
certitude,
elegance,
and radienn?e.
cleoquerescent,
"Bamboo" would
carnal seizure
During
bamboo.
my
florid adjectives
be but would be like:
among many things,
and ardor.
balance,
panda Don
Juans would
whisper
the width and shape of a panda's
Approximately,
throat is the same as a bamboo culm.
Pandas
cannot
speak and they are doomed.
the 1980s, efforts
saw breeding
populations
During
Beijing,
Chengdu,
Wordlessly,
pandas
to increase
programs
Wolong,
conveyed
dissatisfaction
bamboo,
captive pandas
and
buns.
steamed
milk,
apples,
Mothers
4
become
in
and Fuzhou.
Without
Males
panda
established
impotent.
abandon their cubs,
with
are asked upon
these programs.
to eat
their steamed
is a major
Disinclination
In some
buns.
problem
in captive
of blossoms
the appearance
in
every other member
flowering
cases,
forewarns
breeding.
in individuals
across
the world.
if, as rarely happens,
a panda cub is born abroad
Even
every panda maintains
Chinese
citizenship.
Pandas
do not mate
Last year
wedding
for life.
in a Thailand
was
zoo, a traditional Thai
to encourage
two pandas
performed
to mate.
So far, it has worked.
Outside
grows
culms
Without:
the zoo bamboo
thick and close
nodding
over walls.
bamboo.
hates anything
Nothing
more than bamboo hates
pandas.
In a day, fourteen hours may
being eaten by a panda.
be spent
5
in the presence of better food sources,
to crush,
teeth are designed
pandas, whose
Even
single out
bamboo.
The best
developed
theory to date says mass
in bamboo as defense
die-off
against predators: an entire forest dies
that is to say, undergoes
together
together:
a change: anything
that depends on that forest will be abandoned:
seeds drift into a desiccated maw, out a rotted throat.
Love
is a war
bamboo
While
is winning.
bamboo
capable
succeeds
of forming
there are around
With
huge
3,000
all over
the earth
forests
pandas
left in nature.
these odds pandas should hold
in mating
but they do not.
a greater
interest
them,
they reach out slowly to what surrounds
fit their hand around it, then mouth,
then throat, then trust.
Instead
Iwant
6
to tell you
the moral
of this story
but
I am
I cannot. Where
I see the answers
thick and close:
outside
the world:
this Iwant
to hold without
my hands
are empty.
7