Our scars will be singing

  

Our scars

the places,

textured and smooth,

the places rubbed on the world

too soon, too fast and too hard.

Our scars,

never voiceless,

urgent with longing,

bitter at silence,

surprised by rare peace.

Our innocence nearby,

before we had wounds,

upright and real,

stands in ranks with our warrior,

pretending no fear,

and ourselves for the ages,

oracular and wise.

Choir of us,

shaking rust from our voices,

adding rhythm and tune,
giving shape to the music

we soon will be singing.

Levertov’s children: The Poets in the World

Denise Levertov’s book, The Poet in the World, is her quite engaging investigation of the process by which some of her own poems came into existence. But I am deeply distracted by the title.

The Poet in the World—something great implied here about poets and poetry. The ideal, the poet in the world, is transcendent. But reality lies in the pursuit of the ideal, the challenge that must be accepted, poem by poem, by poets in the world.

Levertov, a poet for change, a poet for human liberation, inspires me. In turn, what I want, more than anything else, is to inspire you because, if I am a poet, it is likely that some of the reasons why I am are also some of the reasons why you are, too.

Just the other day, a friend introduced me to Nawal.

“This is Jeff Epton,” my friend said. “He’s a poet,” which I think was a very affirming thing to say, and typical of my friend.

Nawal’s smile was brilliant and warm. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I inferred that she was happy to meet a poet.

“Are you a poet, also?” I asked.

Nawal demurred. “I write poetry sometimes,” she said.

I brushed her qualification aside. I’m sure you are a poet, I responded, reminded in the same moment of a fragment I had written recently about being surrounded by poets. (And reminded in this present moment that I read the fragment to Malik, who told me that he’s a rapper, not a poet, because he doesn’t go deep enough. But the truth is we’re all mostly just skimming the surface, only occasionally holding our breath for a deeper dive.)

In any case, Malik considered the passage and concluded that what I had written was, indeed, a poem. As it turns out, affirmations are everywhere.

I told Nawal about the poem, and about how it had been inspired by Levertov’s book. When I mentioned Levertov’s title, The Poet in the World, I could see in Nawal’s expression that the title, and all it might imply, resonated for her.

She said that she’d like to see my poem, and I asked for and received her e-mail address. I’ll send it along, I told her. But this morning I discovered the poem really was a fragment.

I hate to rush things (though Marrianne would tell you that actually I just don't like to finish things), but it has been hanging fire for too long, so I went ahead and finished it, for now. And, if later, the poem turns up again, somehow unfinished, I’ll finish it again, maybe. But in the meantime, it seems to be the case that muses, like poets, are everywhere.

And here, ushered into the world by Denise Levertov and Malik and Nawal and me and who really knows who else, is the poem, finished for now:

The Poets in the World

Am I a poet in the world?

A voice both anchored here

and cast away?

An echo dimly understood?

A whisper barely heard?

I am a poet in the world,

and when I am,

when I inhabit this place

and this place inhabits me,

I know some

of what there is

to know about the world,

how it tastes

in places, how it feels

in part, how the silence

sounds, how the noise

can sing from me,

even in the forest, in the cities,

with scattered ears to hear.

I am a poet in the world.

I want a taste,

a feel. I strain to see,

to hear the world ahead,

the lagging and the dragging world

behind.

I am a poet in the world.

I know to a certainty,

I send out words,

and words return to me.

I am surrounded.

So many voices.

So many poets.

Against Anxiety

You go in certainty that mystery

will fill your lungs.

You go with the push

of indecisive wind,

with sun a brilliance

and a sorrow,

with a drifting of older friends

and a sprouting of new.

You go beneath

the beckoning moon,

the stoic moon,

the amber moon

and the unnamed sky.

The rhythm in your ears is the tap

and drum of others’ lives,

the constant beat of yours,

and the subtle song around

of remix and renewal.

You go to dream the dreams of others

and to find that they dream yours,

and you and they are hope

and loss and joy and struggle
and the next great step ahead.

Zeroes, eights and the lively wet

This is a revised version of the poem published here earlier. I like this version much better. If anyone wants to compare the two, here's the earlier version.

The porch in summer,

wind muttering low sounds,

Aspen leaves fussing attention,

scents and sights spilling

down slope and up,

mountain spruce bend sway bend.

Chisel in his right,

beer ready to the left,

a sharpening stone sits flatly

on blue-jeaned thigh.

Lightly oiled, the round stone

lies, waiting for the beveled edge.

In a big hour,

or a shorter two,

the sun will set,

true, as always.

Entranced, he’ll still be lightly

tracing eights and zeroes on stone,

chisel edge angled just so.

Sipping at the can to his left,

sliding thumb to tip,

contemplating sharp and sharper,

entranced.

Back to the beer.

Back to the stone.

Zeroes and eights,

rolling wave of oil

and grit pushed here,

there by the big hand

of this universe.

Zero, eight, sipping,

thumb test for sharp,

sharp, could be sharper to bite

the door jamb easy.

A cloud scuds blue sky.

He flatters singing birds

with compliments,

sips, watches, heeds the sentinel pines

bend crouch bend,

tests for sharp,

sun and face and trance,

zeroes and eights,

rhythm and rhythm

until the chisel’s tip,

covered with his peaceful

blood, calls him back
to its lively wet.

The thumb,

now parallel grooved, leaks blood.

Sharp. Enough.

Shuts his eyes,

low sounds and high,

catching up on what

the junipers have been saying

to the well flattered birds

and to him.

Mr. Flood's Party, a poem and a bar

The Ann Arbor bar, Mr. Flood's Party, founded by Ned Duke and Buddy Jack some time during the summer of 1969, was an incredible place to hang out. One couldn't eat there, only drink, but often drinking was quite enough. And when one needed a breath of fresh air, or a toke, one only had to step outside, turn the corner onto Ashley Street and light up.

Buddy Jack was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after the bar opened. Buddy's absence and Ned's constant presence made it seem like the bar had always been Ned's. With his long dark hair and beard, overalls and gymnast's body, Ned was a confident and powerful presence. But he didn't seem to require much of anything from anybody else and his bar felt like a gift.

It also seemed a kind of wormhole, a way to enter the country lane described in the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem that gave Flood's its name. And maybe wandering that lane, or heading east (or, as Jim Florey says, "west") on Liberty after the bar closed, turning south into the neighborhood, one might even encounter Eben Flood, hanging out in Eberwhite Woods, muttering to himself and toasting old friends.


Mr. Flood's Party
by Edward Arlington Robinson

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn.
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He sat the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood--
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did
And Eben apparently thought so too;
For soon among the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang--

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered, and the song was done.
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below--
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

I know this:

A poem, if written,
is a way in,
a way out,

a way to entangle,
a way to get suddenly unentangled,

a path through the tall grass,
a breeze through the trees,
a dryness in the swamp,

a certainty that winks and flares,
a rush that speeds and flows
and settles in
and winds its way forward
and meanders back
and on
and on

Brian Gilmore's revolution (for my father)

Brian Gilmore is a poet about whom Peter Harris is speaking when he says that he values those poets who do not elevate themselves above the work, itself. I recently had the privilege of attending one of Brian's poetry readings. He read one touching poem about his father, a different one is copied below. I wonder if Brian is capable of writing a poem that does not touch my heart.

my father was a dictator.

in 1968 dad suspended the house

constitution

instituted a state of emergency

suspended any rights television

made us think we had.

he declared tarzan a fake

nat turner important

malcolm x a brother

we must understand.

it was strange this regime

always looming like lightning

during a thunderstorm, but never

to harm, though we know the sky

is no friend of careless boys

who sometimes end up

walking home in the rain.

often my brother and I rebelled against

this totalitarian despot.

we declared civil war by

staying out until 4 or 5 a.m.

el presidente would be awake

when we returned,

calm in his demeanor, greeting us with

one of those well-prepared speeches,

like castro.

this constant pounding on our brains made us

surrender eventually, and end our unrest after

nearly 20 years of disorganized resistance.

the will of this monarch

became our will:

like, “you will go to school.”

“you will not destroy your life.”

now when I stop by my father’s house

the state of emergency is over

the revolution he declared was successful

the laws he passed are no longer in need

of enforcement.

these presidential duties

are exclusively mine now

and if

i am ever lucky enough to become

a dictator

i shall not hesitate

to crush tarzan and

give really long speeches

in

another language.

for Julie

My warrior ranges

without me;

moves herself onward,

before my messages arrive.

Dauntless, magnificent,

but the wounds of warriors

are never washed away

and, in time, magnify.

Dreaming, I hurry

to catch her on her way,

but often I am lagging

and her wild signs grow faint.

Still, there are the days

I come upon her;

briefly tend her wounds

and share a bit of pain.

When next she’s off again,

it will be so very long

before I can say once more

rest here, let me love you now.

Brian Gilmore's billy bathgate (for Chico)

I have just recently gotten familiar with Brian Gilmore's poetry. Brian's poetry abandons nothing, brings everything with him as he goes. Brian's DC childhood is a big part of where he came from, and, as he moves on with his life, a big part of who he still is. This poem is a new favorite of mine. And it reminds me of Marge Piercy's "Joy Road and Livernois." In that poem, Piercy also brings everyone with her.

It is the first poem in his new book, We Didn't Know Any Gangsters

billy bathgate (for chico)

            all I’ve got is this picture.

it could have been van der zee

gordon parks,

oggi ogburn fresh from

a chancellor Williams

shoot.

we are capable boys;

innocent,

up some small mountain

in summertime

from that swamp of a city.

we couldn’t juggle balls

didn’t know any gangsters,

all we had was ice cold michelob

and red juicy melon

holy like water.

we didn’t know about rattlesnakes

that i’ve now been told are

all over that mountain.

all i’ve got is this picture.

i could call up the crew,

though some of them are

gone away now

like wisps of smoke.

others are here,

just floating on skyline

like kite

without string.

we were capable boys,

looking into the future as if we

would live like frederick douglass

or c.l.r. james.

did I mention the michelob?

red juicy melon

holy like water?

and how about those rattlesnakes?

all around us, now that we know

they are there.

all I’ve got is this picture.

unbreakable smiles.

lean frames.

polo shirts gripping young boys,

soon to be walking tightropes

without poles.

            it’s there, all of it.

            ice cold michelob

.

            melon holy like water.

            rattlesnakes.

            we couldn’t juggle balls.

didn’t know any gangsters.

            we were capable boys,

            all i’ve got is this picture.

The Courage All Around

When Marrianne and Brendan and I first got to Washington, I'd go a couple of times a year to Bus Boys and Poets open-mic night. It was always very exciting. Most of the poets who made it to the mic were rappers. They were driven by rhymes and rhythms and an apparent need to get up on the stage and say who they were and what they cared about.

And every once in a while I'd get up and try to rumble a few lines, injecting a little blank verse, substituting assonance or alliteration for rhyme and, quite obviously, an occasional longer word when a shorter one might have done. The audience was always patient, but usually hungry for the next rapper. 

In the upshot, I learned far more from them than they learned from me. And, watching the risks they took, I learned that I needed to take more risks, too, and put more heart into speaking my poems. I wrote "The Courage All Around" for them:

Late-night honest

with myself

My boy shames me

The courage he shows

drumming at the Metro

Spare change pours in

Folded bills drifting like

snow covering his lap

Ten years old, first

sharing a buck

with a woman who asks,

then shooing her away

when she won’t stop

asking for more

He goes about his business,

a lionheart tending his

pride of intentions,

while I flinch at the work

before me, at stepping up

before you, at speaking my piece

But where he’s heading,

where heart and skill

and the company of others,

the company of you,

colleagues with an instinct

to be movement and reach

we can believe in,

that place, that thought, swells

my heart The world you will build

beckons and beguiles

and because the heart is

a complicated thing

I feel no shame here

I feel the courage all around 

I Am Your Journeyman

I am no poet of the

   interior voyage.

But I am a journeyman,

   giving good effort

for wages or food.

I know the paths

    through caves and forests.

I know the edible fruit

    along the way.

I’ll show you the shallow fords

   across the river of tears.

Follow me

    picking the way through the woods

on black days. Heed this moonlight

    exalting the heart even through

this night of fear.

Caution now,

    there may be need for stealth.

Keep pace.

Keep close.

Keep faith.

Savor this good bread,

    considering without regret

the choices you have made.

We’ll arrive safely soon enough,

    resting on Thursday,

moving on, refreshed, on Friday.

    Along the way,

we’ll learn more trust,

   celebrating dews and frosts and thunder.

(This poem was included in Wild Once and Captured)

The Propaganda of Everything

In sunbeam home
life comes greets rests goes
transient eternal undiminished

to the stars to the stars

He is who he is

He is who he is

with a buzz on

He is who he is

cicada vibrato

singing blood singing bones

He is who he is

slipped by in the dark

rushing to mark the sliding away

One last son striding by

speaking slang of the streets,
scratching and shouting survival

He is who he is

and so are we all

chanting and drumming,

twisting and reaching,
We are who we are

the nightfall on us,

on our deep dreaming breaths,

driving ourselves as if we could climb

from the depths of our well

to the stars to the stars

Begins and Ends with Amina

What does the world

look like?

Like baby Amina,

who holds the phone

in one hand and slaps a place

between her forehead and ear with the other

and listens to me talk and talk

and makes a sense of it

that actively escapes me,

and she includes me anyway.

What does the world

look like?

The way you paint a picture

of the Van Gogh-smeared women

at the beach, your husband dying comfortably,

head in your lap to remind you of the love

that includes you anyway.

What does the world

look like?

Like the boy who is so much a man

that you know now he will leave

exactly as he should, and long before

you have forgotten his weight in your arms.

Leaves sooner than you wish,

but he takes your measure anyway.

What does the world

look like?

The way it did the day we built the fence

around the home of the woman

wishing to stay safe,

around the woman who we together

briefly loved and laid to an extra day

without despair and a longer moment

that includes us anyway.

Whatever does the world look like?

Like the green street that is my home

and the tall trees shading neighbors

and helping them to cross the shifting line

that separates them from me

until the moment of my need,

when they include me anyway.

Whatever does the world look like?

The way our heroes give what they have got,

and call on us for more

to make the point that heroes

come in groups of us

whenever we are willing,

including all the unincluded.

Whatever does the world look like?

Like the winding path you go,

bare and beautiful legs propelling,

your work ahead, the inhuman size

and shape of it, and all the coaxing and caressing

 to include the unincluded.

Whatever does the world look like?

The rest stop on the peaceful stretch of moral arc,

where we can dip our brushes

in the deepening hues of struggle and of conflict,

the message to include all of the excluded.

What does the world

look like to the baby

who has flung a kiss

so hard and far that we will spend

a lifetime happily trying to catch up?

And So I Say

I

Suspicion pulses from those gathered here for trial

My companion believes I’m fair, she thinks I will be good

She has been wrong before—she will be so, again

These others know all that for truth

I say make your judgment, if you will

I freely offer all my sins and pleasures

I do not know what you will do, yet I think that I can bear it

But if the verdict should somehow be that I am not so cruel as charged,

Let the record show you did your best and I did mine

II

What I have to say will have to do

for now,

for this,

for you.

This place is rich

and full of evening dark, and vast

and makes a cozy home

for transient souls,

which is to say

it is a nameless place

for nameless things

from where I wrote to you

before I became the bit that prowled your skin

and kissed so light and tender

you felt no sudden thrill or lasting heat;

just the little boost that comes with the sweet ripening of fruit.

III

What the children endure

is unendurable

They transcend

what cannot be survived.

And we know from knowing them

that were they not tough as turtles,

nor fleet as flying things,

nor comfortable as Friday fish,

nor relentless as wind,

nor guileless as tomorrow’s dreams

of tomorrow,

we could not have gone to there and back,

nor made so much of time.

IV

The earth around us warms.

Our trembling cells

echo in waves

and wrinkle the land.

Soon we will slip our way

to the hot and wet and sweet place of reimagining

and emerge again to repopulate the evening dark.

Rubber side down

This morning, the voices were killing me. But they’ve always been there and often no problem, at all. I’m grateful.

But this morning, the voices were cutting me up. That doesn’t show on the map of my face, but the wounds are wet and throbbing, and who it is speaking is often not clear.

But this morning, the voices were massing with pitchforks, like for some Transylvanian hoedown. What were you thinking, asks one, and then they’re coming so fast,

so hostile the questions—

Did you mean to be so cruel?

To whom did you think you were speaking?

What is the statement that lurks in your question?

What did you think would happen?

How dirty will you get if you do it that way?

Who did this, was it you?

How did you get what you do not deserve?

Will you confess?

When will that happen?

Ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad mortem—

jumping in the car a better idea. Traffic’s Empty Pages the theme, but I do got something to show, and I’m carefully keeping the first commandment of motoring—

rubber side down. And the voices grow still.

The Revolution Is Coming: Opening Remarks

Welcome, friends and comradely types.

Here is the list of organizations sending delegations.

As you listen to the names,

as your hearts swell with pride

in the difference we have made,

please imagine the faces of the people

who make these groups synonymous

with justice and sustainability peacefully earned.

Welcome to the delegations from

DC’s GazaBera Shirt Conspiracy,

and from Dayton,

the Obituary for Capitalism Writers’ Workshop;

from Chicago, the Sweet Voices of Reason

and Radical Change;

from just outside of Pittsburgh,

the Beating Heart of Committees

In and Out of Correspondence.

Welcome to the representatives

from North Carolina’s

Action Today, Action Tomorrow, Action Forever,

and welcome to our sisters and brothers from California,

the Rudder and Compass

of the Roundtable of Growers and Smokers.

Welcome to the delegation

from the Bi-coastal Dreamers of Salmon

and Clams and Eating Them, Too.

From damn near everywhere,

Catholics for Real Life

and Joyful Love Along the Way.

We welcome the representatives

from the Moveable Seder

of Jews Who Remember When We Were Slaves in Egypt

and, without irony, Palestinians in Solidarity

with the People of New Jerusalem.

Welcome, also, to the delegation from Michigan,

constantly morphing and growing like Topsy,

the Association of Women and Girls and Men and Boys

and All the Genders Between and Around

and the Workers Against Itty-Bitty Wages

and the Prisoners Solidarity Committee.

Give yourselves a hand.

Thank you.

Please take a moment now

to remember comrades who have passed,

the spiritual delegation of Presente!

aka, All the Friends We’ve Ever Known Who,

with Grace and Courage, Spoke the Truth

and Set Our Hearts and Minds on Fire.

Moving on, now,

we note a proposal

from Laity Naturally Concerned with Everything,

advocating outreach to the Granfalloon

of Drudgery, Cynicism and Bitter Despair,

an organization whose members include

immigrant bashers and homophobes

and a good number of redeemable haters.

This has been moved to the front of our agenda

by the acting convention chair

from We Want Less, We Got This.

To begin, we await only

the delegations from

This Millennium We Are Going To Get It Right

and from the Moral Arc of the Universe Bending.

While we wait, let’s turn to the person beside us

and give them a big, sloppy kiss,

or a whispered message about good times ahead.

Remember our lives together

depend on solidarity and action and, also and inevitably,

shameless exchanges of bodily fluids.

And now, I turn the gavel over to our chair

who will lead us in our efforts during the week ahead.

Thank you, friend.

I’m going to declare a brief recess

while we wait for straggling comrades.

We do have some hard work ahead,

so please take advantage of the moment

for a caffeine refueling or, perhaps, to share a doobie.

Spell

Overhead,

the tree’s the thing of things—

All around are more,

but this has greener leaves,

somehow filters darker sky.

A humid promise hanging there,

brewed by a full and super moon.

A golden sap, gushing sweet,

pumped to ground inversely

beneath the tree on which I snatch a seat

for long enough to bathe my feet,

to sip the air that rises redolent;

a vapor in, a vapor out,

a lingering caress,

like a plea to sit, to stay,

to drift away.

Stores of sweet, a sip of rich desire

In the middle dark

the passages stand open,

and the choice of when to go

and where

is unencumbered.

The slumbering horde

in groans and sighs lays whispering,

breath erupts in sudden gasps and nods,

and the sleepless few

move with silent, careful steps.

This is when I think of you

and all you’ve meant to me.

For now we do our separate dance,

face risks alone, advancing as we do,

wrestling beasts and wresting joy.

You, small warrior,

with the silk-draped hip and breast,

turn to me and wrap yourself

around my nakedness,

as though to wish me on my way

with stores of sweet, a sip of rich desire,

to carry on to where I dream of next.

I wait for you to rise for me

I am your silk and satin offering,

but you must win me with your sword.

I will not come this night to you—

I wait for you to rise for me.

The Spooking Call and the Plunging Dark

I have never been

alone in the North

at night and so far

from everything and everyone

that I could not hear the hum

of voices in my head

or the clang and whistle

of the iron way.

But I have been at the spot

where the sound of the whistling beast,

the steel and the weight of it,

was the spooking call,

the sound of the plunging dark;

where the honey-scented mortal thing

weaving through the sweet thorns,

beneath the clouded light of stars,

waved along by the wet-grass fairies,

is certain to arrive in the spying dawn

that whispers hints and rumors

and promises to fill

the heart’s desire

to be forever lost.

I have been there.

I have been there.

And I will go again.

What Evolution Has Wrought

or

Narcissism and Poetry:

Two Peas in a Human Pod

Whenever I find that I have forgotten

something I wanted to remember,

forgotten something I wanted to do,

I must first decide—

without knowing in the present moment

exactly what it is I have forgotten—

how important it might be to remember

whatever it is that has gotten away from me,

and if I decide that the thing I can’t remember

merits remembering, then I must think back

to the moment I became aware

that I had forgotten whatever it is I wished

to remember or do, and continue to explore

each moment preceding that moment

until I arrive at the point and the place

when I was last aware of whatever

it was that I do not remember now.

I hope that having arrived there

the recovered memory

will turn out to be worth the effort.

A Different Place to Stand

Like an oracle

draped in fine cloth,

she spoke.

Always and only

find the small way through.

Always and only

seek the hidden path.

Always and only

stand when standing will count.

In that moment

she walked away.

Remembering the good times,

he shook himself.

He watched her go.

Then, just as she had done,

he walked away himself,

seeking the small way,

seeking the surprises he might find

waiting on the hidden path,

and a different place to stand.

Between paradise and fear

...and further on.

I posted this a while ago on In and Out, but it's about poetry--other people's poetry, by and large--and ought to be here on Outdoor Poetry Season.

I noticed it got a fair number of views recently and in trying unsuccessfully to puzzle out why, I found out that Kim-An Lieberman, who wrote one of the poems featured in this piece, died last year. She was only 37.

Kim-An was a mother of three, a wife and an already accomplished poet. My heart sinks at the thought of her death, but I know she will continue to live in the vivid memory of others. I believe that is no small thing and recently wrote about how life and memory sometimes seem to be nearly the same thing.


I don't love all of "The Creation Story" by Joy Harjo, but I really do love these three stanzas:

"It's not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

"I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

"Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot."

Like Harjo, I've discovered I didn't (and don't and won't) "have the words" countless times, including the words to carry a friend to the stars, but here Harjo finds the words to name the shortfall. And when she rues her inability to keep her "people safe from drought or gunshot," she has named both herself and her people. Good words.

In his poem "Three Women," Donald Hall has come into possession of a few words that do get the job done. They will not carry him or anyone else to the stars, but they work for capturing the richness of some experiences and the loss that sometimes follows. In fact, they work so well that Hall uses the same words exactly in three consecutive stanzas, making up the whole of his poem:

"When you like a woman,
you talk and talk.
One night you kiss.
Another night you fuck.
You're both content,
maybe more than content.
Then she goes away."

The poem is included in Hall's last book of poetry, The Back Chamber, described on the book jacket as "full of the life-affirming energy" of the poet. But I see it full of a rich, inescapable melancholy.

Kim-An Lieberman won a poetry prize from the Dayton Voice in 1995 or '96 (I suppose I could look it up, sort through the bound copies of the paper we have in our possession, but one thing at a time here). A decade later, her book, Breaking the Map, was published and she sent an autographed copy to Marrianne and I. Her book ended up being part of the motivation for publishing Wild, Once and Captured, a book of my own poetry. Sampling Kim-An's poetry I come to "Grandmother Song," and am struck by the fact that she has found a way to lift her grandmother to the stars.

"...Underneath is a ruby of blood.
The needles and tubes are webbed like milliner's lace.
Last the jade necklace, leaking the milk of her heart."

Perhaps, the words come to Lieberman because she so clearly hears and sees and feels her grandmother at the end of her life.

"...She gestures
faintly upward from the bed; I bring my ear
to the rasp of her laboring breath. I watch her draw
pin by pin from the loose chignon
...I roll the soiled gown..."

Hunting more details, I found an interview with Kim-An where she observes that "journalism and poetry, in particular, both share a language of ear-catching 'sound bites' as well as an urge to make a permanent record of fleeting events and observations." This seems an apt description of how Ernesto Cardenal goes about writing a poetry that finds the words to make permanent a record of "fleeting events." His book, Zero Hour, is a collection of what Cardenal calls "documentary poems."

"In Mr. Spencer's gold mines they X-ray
each miner twice a year
to see if he shows symptoms of TB.
If there's a shadow, he's paid off
at once. In due course he spits blood, and tries
to claim: ...
... and so he dies on a Managua sidewalk."

Cardenal, is a poet and a Catholic priest and the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture after the overthrow of Somoza. His poetry is the work of a man who hears music in his head, but feels the urgent need to change the acoustics of the world around him so that others may hear their own music. Cardenal makes poetry relevant as Lawrence Ferlinghetti insisted it should be when he wrote:

“I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs. Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?”

And Cardenal is one of the poets I was thinking about when I wrote "Wild Dogs of Poets:" 

The wild dogs of poets

speak sharps and blunts,

wish the streets

to the back alleys

of emerald cities;

some singing separately

and, alive for now,

glow in the dusky, dreaming sky.

Some scratch for pennies

wherever there are no such

generosities. Some kill time

as though they are flush,

And some few,

the chosen,

die on the barricades,

hopeful and ready.

What we would do, if we could

Stranger gone by,

alone in his head,

lone wolf set dreaming,

dreaming dark places,

and vast, teeming praries,

a leaping of blood

overflowing old channels,

snarling and snapping

and making the sky.

Stranger gone stalking

and sniffing

and the air sniffing back,

ruffling and dancing and drinking

the dream

of the wolf on the land,

the wolf of the forest,

wolf of the prarie.

The air becomes wind

flowing with news

of the stranger behind,

whispering places

and planning the way

to stay ahead of the sun,

keeping the secrets

of strangers and wolves

and where the blood races,

forever leaps forward

and makes its new way.