David Weiss: Synecdoche and its Discontents

for Matthew Lippman   

With each day the world as I’ve known it

grows more unknown  

Every day I mistake some small part of it

for the whole

as if a small act of kindness stood for human nature

as if the vast awakened

underground rivers of Greenland

letting themselves like blood into the North Atlantic

said it all     or

as if cultural changes in the baking of bread in Lebanon did

or the catacombs of the Medicare system I’ve now entered

did     

Today the whole was summed up by a boy 

so young 

that it’s as if just yesterday he hadn’t yet begun 

to exist

who loves to break eggs 

and help make pancakes     and yet    

go figure    

refused even so much as to taste them 

And then there’s kissing    

that awkward     dazzling     and chancy thing

which I think about more often than

I receive or give

which feels like a part 

that’s no less than the whole 

shebang

part and world remaking each other

Even the word world

which derives from Old English wer    man   

and ald — an even older Proto-Indo European word — 

old or age

refers only to us and our long linguistic time

on earth    

Every day I mistake and have mistaken this world 

for a place 

that I am inseparable from

until 

with an edict or insult     or a kick in the teeth

you are made to feel 

no longer even the least part of it    

your world made foreign

and you    fleeing it    a foreigner

hounded and unprotected over the face

of the earth     maybe pulled from a sea

made colder by the bleeding waters of Greenland 

to seek    a refugee now    refuge

and maybe to receive it    and maybe one day 

as a result

to be able to offer it to others

which     like a kiss

would mean the world

 *Synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part is used for a whole