This Small Door #8

Museum of Bees by Mark Wunderlich

Thomas Boxma. via Unsplash

Museum of Bees
Mark Wunderlich

At the museum of bees, there are no bees—
just the empty boxes of the hives

painted gaily, offered as folk art
and displayed here in this ancient farmhouse—

picturesque on the slope of an alpine meadow,
with its thatched roof, and its valuable view,

its fallow fields mowed periodically
to keep the best alpine flowers in bloom.

The bee boxes smell of warm wax, a whiff
of honey with its faint trace of chamomile,

and in the part of the museum that shows
how the farmers once lived, there is a glass case

containing a doll with a porcelain head,
its marble eyes black and unblinking, staring upward

at a heaven fixed in its unseeing gaze.
I assume this is the Christ child

reproduced for domestic veneration,
and I admire its human hair

which is tow-colored and curled in spiral
locks that fall around its matte china-gray face.

Someone sewed a swaddling gown
from strips of silk and lace. On a bed

of brocade, the little body lies
sealed in its coffin of glass. Outside

on the sun-cast meadow, hikers
traverse the trail on their way past

this forgotten house, hidden in a cluster of trees,
the bees too having been forgotten

or left to make their own way
wild in the domesticated woods, and far

from the diligent hands of men.

Kinjal:

I like how this poem subverts expectations in the first line itself. ‘...there are no bees–’ and then the suggestive emptiness of it. While it is nice to notice how sometimes the poems turn and leap, I really liked this poem for beginning like this, for reneging its title in the first line itself.

And then the poet offers us another interpretation of the image. That the empty box is part of a folk art collection. This is followed by the cliched aesthetics of an alpine landscape. Here again, the poet leans into the lines with the alliterative phrase ‘valuable view’. And then how this view is curated with ‘fallow fields’.

I also like how the couplets move from one image to another, but keeping the narrative element flowing. And in a very clever way, the poet has created a sensory experience, with ‘chamomile’, ‘marble eyes’ and with the moving gaze. There is also a haunting note, with the porcelain doll looking heaven-wards. While this could be also ritualistic or biblical, it was more eerie for me with the mention of ‘human hair’. I like how the poet uses specificity and precision in the words to create an exactness of his experience.

And moving deeper and deeper into the museum, zooming in on this doll in the glass case while ignoring other objects, the poem suddenly turns outside.

Again the picturesque comes back and the cliched hikers and trails, but amidst it, I liked the way the poet pauses to eulogise or at least acknowledge the artistic endeavor of man. I like how the poem meanders with clear images and movement from a prosaic ‘box of bees’ to ‘diligent hands of men’, and while its scope might seem travel or nature oriented, it also holds a time capsuled note on the work of humans in marking their presence.

Kunjana:

I found this poem unsettling. Not just the idea that bees have been museumified but also the emptiness of hives and how they have been turned into a collector’s item of sorts. Due to the choice of words by the poet, I almost feel like there is a performance of beauty – ‘picturesque’, ‘valuable view’ – it all seems manicured or curated. And the bee boxes evoke some kind of aesthetic experience with their warm wax smell / honey / chamomile - not the real, direct experience of honey but sort of an imaginative, second-hand, vicarious sensory experience.

I don’t know what the poet means when he says ‘how the farmers once lived’ – once lived when? I also didn’t understand the turn from the empty bee boxes to the doll in a glass case. There is a boxed-in-ness to both. And IDK about dolls – perhaps I have watched too many ghost videos so I find dolls creepy AF. So, I agree with the word you used, ‘eerie’. Also, this aspect of the doll’s head being made from porcelain, its eye of marble, its human hair, its china gray face, its dress, its coffin of glass – there is something unnatural or artificial or performative about the whole thing, its gaze fixed heavenwards. And why would the poet call it ‘coffin of glass’? It’s like the doll’s dead but pretending to be alive like a real person – this resonates with the empty bee boxes and the fallow fields and the picturesque view (there is a sense of deadness in all of these things). There is something about human gaze too in this entire poem – how we are staring at or looking at “art” or items in a museum, how things are on display for public consumption. IDK. Strange shit. Also, do the couplets not seem like a comment on the neatness of this whole curated-ass experience? IDK.

Then the poet turns his gaze outside and talks about the hikers – he mentions the bees again and how they have been forgotten (have they gone extinct?) or have been left to fend for themselves. Also, ‘wild in the domesticated woods’ gives me that vibe of things being manicured and tamed – the wild parts having been erased. I didn’t quite get the last line – ‘far from the diligent hands of men’ – diligent because the speaker was talking about farmers earlier? And why ‘far’, why the distance? Unsettling poem. Still scratching my head about the amount of focus on the doll and why it matters in a poem about a museum of bees. Or is it like a comment on the human-obsessed nature of human beings? How even in a museum of bees, we don’t see the bees (because they are not around anymore) – we see a human replica in the form of a doll. Sorry if I’m projecting too much of my own ecological agenda onto the poem! Anyway, unsettling shit. Thanks for this strange poem, Kinjal.

Yashasvi:

Wow! that was weird friends. Read it a few times and yes I agree, head scratching stuff indeed. Go Mark. I agree with both your observations about how the poem is unsettling and eerie and also has a manicured quality to it. While I was reading I perhaps thought that maybe the bees have gone missing and now only boxes remain. Or perhaps this is how we see lives no? We put them up in museums and we all peer at them and nod our heads in collective amazement, life aisi hoti thi. Like how we see the elements of the Indus Valley Civilization or others at a museum, remnants of a past life, I thought perhaps it was a depiction of that. Of another life and how the bees were there too and so was the strange doll. Really what on earth is going on there? And the move from the doll (many lines on that) where it is looking up, to the hikers who have moved past this house and bees that have left to live in a wild life? Maybe it is that, it is showing us this place which is there just for show, people pass it by and the bees have left? Hmm not sure. Maybe the diligent hand of men is the hand that created this false museum and the bees have left for the wild? Okay I am going to stop throwing more questions. It was an interesting read, I am certainly going to describe a doll in detail in some poem at some point, baaki I didn’t fully understand what was going on but it had me intrigued.