'They Are the Oldest Living Captive Race'

A year ago I read Dr. Oliver Sacks’ posthumously published collection of essays, Everything in Its Place (2019). Some people fancy themselves so sophisticated that nothing surprises them. They’re too cool for wonder. Whatever that silly affectation is called, Sacks was stricken with its opposite. Everything seemed to amaze him. I wonder if this state has something to do with knowing so much (Sacks was an insatiable polymath) that you realize how little you know. Perhaps only the truly learned can appreciate their ignorance.

 

The essay that particularly impressed me was “Night of the Ginkgo,” first published in The New Yorker in 2014. Sacks describes a botanical wonder: the gingko, a prehistoric gymnosperm that drops all of its leaves at once, often overnight. Sacks goes on to quote an excerpt from “The Consent” (Sentences, 1980), a sonnet by Howard Nemerov:

 

“Late in November, on a single night

Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees

That stand along the walk drop all their leaves

In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind

But as though to time alone: the golden and green

Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday

Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

 

“What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?

What in those wooden motives so decided

To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,

Rebellion or surrender? and if this

Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?

What use to learn the lessons taught by time,

If a star at any time may tell us: Now.”

 

Whereas Sacks emphasize wonder at the phenomenon, Nemerov ponders its meaning. We are as mortal as leaves, and Isaiah reminds us that “all flesh is grass.” Yet we dismiss determinism and proudly parade our free will. What force beyond us might some early winter night erase us from creation? Clearly, apart from their beauty, gingkoes intrigued Nemerov. He returns to them in “Gingkoes in Fall”:

 

“They are the oldest living captive race,

Primitive gymnosperms that in the wild

Are rarely found or never, temple trees

Brought down in line unbroken from the deep

Past where the Yellow Emperor lies tombed.

 

“Their fallen yellow fruit mimics the scent

Of human vomit, the definite statement of

An attitude, and their translucency of leaf.

Filtering a urinary yellow light.

Remarks a delicate wasting of the world.

 

“An innuendo to be clarified

In winter when they defecate their leaves

And bear the burden of their branches up

Alone and bare, dynastic diagrams

Of their distinguished genealogies.”

 

Vomit, urine and defecation. And yet these ancient trees possess “distinguished genealogies.”