The Body's Question Quotes

“We want so much,
When perhaps we live best
In the spaces between loves,

That unconscious roving,
The heart its own rough animal.
Unfettered.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“We ran
Back and forth, opening
All the sturdy doors, giddy
As kid goats that have learned
To dance on two hooves.
Breath after breath charging
In and out. Heavy, heavy,
And then weightless, moving
With the prescience of light.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“These days, I believe
In everything. That you and I
Are real. That this room,
This simple life
Have gone on
And will go on.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“At first sight
Of those bodies,
Like mine
Or any other--

No: like mine
But intact--why
Did those men,
Asway that entire day,

Seadrunk
On parched land,
Not think:
The Lord is Grand.

Why was that riddle
Not something
They knelt to? Why,
Instead, did they take it as a sign

That their want
Should lead them?
The riddle
Doesn't go away.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“Lean bodies. Shadows
Incarnate with a grace
Both dark and bright.

As though the world
Were showing off. Black,
Like sable. Like the deep
Center of the darkest fruit,

The first fig. Primordial.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“Outside, buses cruise past
Like ancient, leaf-eating beasts,
Bodies too big for the minds
That move them.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“The pirates out selling fakes are finally
Able to draw a crowd. College girls
Show bare skin in good faith. They crouch
Over heaps of bright purses, smiling,
Willing to pay. Their arms
Swing forward as they walk away, balancing
That new weight on naked shoulders.
The pirates smile, too, watching
Pair after pair of thighs carved in shadow
As girl after girl glides into the sun.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“She will never be free
Because she is afraid. He

Will never be free
Because he has always

Been free.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“It is true that death resists the present tense.
But memory does death one better. Ignores the future.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“I crumple paper to encourage the flame,
And for a brief moment everything is lit.

But the logs haven't caught,
Just seem to smolder and shrink
As the heat works its way to their center.

Getting to what I want
Will be slow going and mostly smoke.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“I don’t know anymore where you’ve gone to. Whether your soul
Waits here--in my room, in the kitchen with the newly blown bulb--
Or whether it rose instantly to the kingdom of hosannas. Some nights,

Walking up my steps in the dark, digging for the mail and my keys,
I know you are far, infinitely far from us. That you watch
In the way one of us might pause a moment to watch a frenzy of ants,
Wanting to help, to pick up the crumb and put it down
Close to their hill, seeing their purpose that clearly.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“It will rain tomorrow, as it rained in the dark days after you died.
And I will struggle with what to wear, and take a place on the bus
Among those I will only ever know by the shape their shoulders make
Above the backs of the seats before mine.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“You led me down the narrow streets of that city.
Stone pavements. Iron gratings.
Geraniums. It was autumn.
People celebrated the return of their dead.
At the time, I did not say Please, God, let me
know nothing else ever but this. I watched
for spaces between stones where I might trip.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“A white day breaks through the dusky cloud
That was last night, when you lifted me
Onto the pillows and whispered marvelous things
Into my thighs. I don't want to rise
From this bed or this life, your head heavy
Beside mine in the low space
Where everything that means something happens.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“The mind a dark city, a disappearing,
A handkerchief
Swallowed by a fist.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“She knows
That she knows nothing of the world,
Which makes the stoop where she kneels
So difficult to rise from.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“Desire is a city of yellow houses
As it surrenders its drunks to the night.
It is the drunks on ancient bicycles
Warbling into motionless air,
And the pigeons, asleep in branches,
That will repeat the same songs tomorrow
Believing them new.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“I have always been this beautiful
And this dead.

Like pages ripped from a passionate book,
I have always been stitched

To the inside of someone's greatcoat,
Someone's tender cheek.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“The hydrangea begins as a small, bright world.
Mother buries rusty nails, and the flowers
Weep blue and pink. I am alone in the garden,
And like all else that is living, I lean into the sun.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“And then it was day and we were free,
Riding in the back of an enormous truck,
Laughing, peeing over the side.

When I saw the hills, how they resembled
The bodies of our women, I knew this country
Never stopped being our country.

But there are people who don’t know
And will never care. White faces,
Black faces that move past us

Like empty plates.
That’s what they think of us.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“We crossed the border
Hours before dawn
Through a hole
Dug under a fence.

We crossed
Dressed as soldiers,
Faces painted
Mud green.

The coyotes
That promised
We’d make it, gave us
A straw broom

To drag behind,
Erasing our tracks.
They gave us meat
Drugged for the dogs.

Farther off,
There were engines,
Voices, a light
That swept the ground.

We crossed
On our bellies.
I wonder
If we’ll ever stand up.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“Below: all of ours
And all of theirs, racing around

like two teams
After a leather ball.
It was a war, he told me.

Whoever won
Would go into the woods
And take whatever grew.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“We are dancing the merengue
And my body rings
With the ringing that wants to be answered.
As though I am a little drunk in the bones.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question

“Not the flame, but what it promised,
Surrender. To be quenched of danger.”
― Tracy K. Smith, The Body's Question