Elegy for Radar
Elegy for Radar
But why? You were never alive, which means
You never died. But one can write an elegy
For lost things, and I’ve lost you, my childhood
Teddy bear. I’m sorry. I had hoped to always
Keep you. You were to be one of the things
I would always keep. The last time I saw you
You had started to lose the wool — it wasn’t
Really wool but some sort of synthetic stuffing —
You were stuffed with, like a hemophiliac
Looking for the football in the thorns.
I wasn’t meant to see that part of you,
The innermost part, ever, but I couldn’t
Help myself — I kept pulling the innermost
Out, diminishing you in my hands if not
In my esteem. One night, in a fit of passion,
I bit off your tongue, yellow to conjure
Honey, and, on another, gnawed the rubber
Off your button nose. Could I have gotten
At your glass eyes, I would have. The fact
They stayed open while my were closed
Was the reason I knew you knew me better
Than I could ever know myself, the way
The gardener knows the closed rose.
After all, your name was Radar, your regard
Sweeping in green waves over the sea
Of me asleep. Of course you smelled
Terrible. You must have been washed
From time to time, tumbled with my clothes.
Maybe that’s the reason why one night
I found that someone had sewn shut
Your wound, the stitches set in a grimace.
You were as thin then as you would ever be.
Done with losing, you were ready to be lost.
I know now that you were nothing but
Material fashioned into the shape of a bear
In China, shipped here with a thousand others
I would have loved just as deeply, set up
Slumpily on a shelf in a store, where someone,
Having heard I was going to be born,
Bought you for me. Then you were put away
In a closet until, one birthday, you were
Remembered and given to me. Finally,
You had the boy your god had promised you.
Now I’ve lost you. But I don’t know that
I’ve held anything as tightly as I held you
In the dark of that room, nor have I
Ever loved anyone so fiercely that I bit off
Their tongue out of longing for its sweetness.