Sonia Sanchez writes in "haikuography," the preface to her book, morning haiku, that "from the moment i opened that book, and read the first haiku, i slid down onto the floor and cried and was changed. i had found me."
In the two-page essay, Sanchez somehow goes on to say more than one might expect to find in a short essay about self and poetry, about short pauses and long memory, about "the blood veins behind beautiful eyes, the fluids in teeth, and the enamel in tongues..."
Sanchez packs all that, the pauses and memories and bitter folk experience, into "15 Haiku," dedicated to Toni Morrison. In the 15th haiku, Sanchez asks,
"O will we selves ever
convalesce as we ascend into wave after
wave of blood milk?"
convalesce as we ascend into wave after
wave of blood milk?"
The answer, one imagines, can only come after poets like Sanchez have begun at the beginning and waited until the end to pose the question.
15 Haiku
(for Toni Morrison)
1.
We
know so little
about
migrations of souls crossing
oceans.
seas of longing;
2.
we
have not always been
prepared
for landings that held
us
suspended above our bones;
3.
in
the beginning
there
wuz we and they and others
too
mournful to be named;
4.
or
brought before elders
even
held in contempt. they were
so
young in their slaughterings;
5.
in
the beginning
when
memory was sound. there was
bonesmell.
bloodtear. whisperscream;
6.
and
we arrived
carrying
flesh and disguise
expecting
nothing;
7.
always
searching
for
gusts of life
and
sermons;
8.
in
the absence
of
authentic Gods
new
memory;
9.
in
our escape from plunder
in
our nesting on agitated land
new
memory;
10.
in
our fatigue at living
we
saw mountains cracking
skulls,
purples stars, colorless nights;
11.
trees
praising our innocence
new
territories dressing our
limbs
in starched bones;
12.
in
our traveling to weselves
in
the building, in the journeying
to
discover our own deaths;
13.
in
the beginning
there
was a conspiracy of blue eyes
to
iron eyes;
14.
new
memory falling into death
O
will we ever know
what
is no more with us;
15.
O
will weselves ever
convalesce
as we ascend into wave after
wave of bloodmilk?
wave of bloodmilk?
