Ode to Cicadas
Lou soulèu me fai canta.
The sun makes me sing.
– Frédéric Mistral
Maracas of trees, teeming
rhythm of my days—
males singing to lure a mate
when it’s hot enough they vibrate
their tymbal—ribbed membrane over
each side of their hollow abdomen—
so it carries up to me here
in Cassis which is itself
a song. Some believed God
sent cicadas to peasants to rouse
them from their afternoon slumber.
Au contraire, the sound they loved
as it lulled them to sleep… Il ne
fait pas bon de travailler quand la
cigale chante. It’s not good to work
when the cicada sings, says local
lore. Yet here I sit at my desk
with two fans to cool me down
that almost drown out their ratcheting.
Coming back from the market, I stopped
as a man pointed up for his young
son at a tree branch where a plump
one rested. O cicadas, Plato
imagined you were once men who,
overcome by the Muses’ song,
began to sing, forgetting food
and drink. Let me be like you,
eschew the fruits of the earth
to lure someone—even God—
with my song.
Sharon Dolin is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Imperfect Present (2022) and Manual for Living (2016); a memoir entitled Hitchcock Blonde (2020); and two books of translation, most recently Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma Gorga (2021), winner of Saturnalia Books’ Malinda Markham Translation Prize and shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, a Pushcart Prize, and Witter Bynner Fellowship, Dolin is associate editor of Barrow Street Press and teaches poetry workshops in New York City.
Read other contributions by Sharon Dolin appearing in Terrain.org: two poems; “Catalan Calendar,” a finalist in the Terrain.org 10th Annual Contest in Nonfiction; and the lyric essay “French Flares.”
Header photo by korea p h kim, courtesy Shutterstock.
