Naming the animals

Let’s name the animals no longer with us,
except in language: start with the dodo,
the Haitian long-tongued bat, the dwarf emu,
the laughing owl, the eastern buffalo.
And then animals like the nukupuu,
the lorikeet, the broad-faced potoroo,
whose absences don’t sadden me as much
as I can’t put a picture to their names:
two potoroos, say, lounging in their den
with baby potoroos clambering over them.

I think of Adam watching the parade
of just-created animals, their form
still taking shape, so had he touched too hard,
the camel might have had some extra humps,
the colors might have smudged on the peacock,
which wasn’t yet a peacock, but a thing,
a brightly-colored, gorgeous, feathered thing
in need of a name--as was the camel,
the marmoset, the deer, the parakeet,
waiting to enter language and be claimed.

But now, we, Adam’s babies, find ourselves
uttering names no one comes up to claim:
no iridescent, billed, web-footed thing
quacks back when we say Leguat’s gelinote—
in fact, unless we say the name out loud
or write it down, the gelinote is gone.
And so, our language, which singles us out
from dwarf emus, nukupuus, potoroos,
becomes an elegy, as with each loss
our humanness begins to vanish, too.

from The Woman I Kept To Myself