505 History and politics poems

There is the lightning-white moment when I learn— the way my costive train to Krakow stopped and I woke to find myself, in jostling twilight, at the Auschwitz platform— that the Italian postcard I garnered in Milan years ago as a genial talisman isn’t of a pipe-dreaming Italian boy, no, no, but an androgynous image of Sophie Scholl, the young, intrepid resistance heroine— as if I’d registered, in my Schubert-adoring daughter, my school-resisting son, a fire undetected before: Doric-strong nouns demanding What would you undertake to stop tyranny?— stouthearted nouns: integrity, probity, courage; in benighted Munich, the spit-in-the-eye swiftness, the unbossed bloom of a crossed-out swastika, the fierce integrity in the gust of the word freedom sprayed over the walls and ramparts of a deranged fatherland that rent flesh as if it were foolscap— Someday you will be where I am now, a steely, premonitory Sophie proclaimed to the rapacious Nazi tribunal that rushed her to execution— Gazer, collector, in clarity’s name, look close, then closer: it’s not just a bud-sweet, pensive beauty, a bel ragazzo’s charm; all these years: it’s the spirit of crusading youth that I’ve cherished.

When you asked if it rained bees or poison you were asking the wrong question. Again. You still didn’t understand the difference between hurricanes and flooding. Thus between gods and humans. Between your slum- lordy digs and the shacks I pass that cling to old boards and huddle around each family. The yards marking the care of home. Everywhere something is falling on someone and I watch like an autumn tourist tripping through the Berkshires. I reach to catch a leaf. I try to straighten a Pisa-like sapling. The wind wraps around us both like a question mark and leaves me standing, the sole witness on this end. I’m telling you about a place of silence. You want it all to be a metaphor. I’m watching a front porch crumble. Still, someone sits there.

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other’s eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says,Take out your pencils. Begin. We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider. We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what’s on the other side. I know there’s something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables. Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need.

We go to prison windows and pass cigarettes, tangerines and iodine through the bars. Anything we think could heal a man. Assassins kiss our fingers. Mercenaries sing us songs about unbroken light as we mend their shirts. The bilingual murderers recite lamentations in one tongue, and in another, young myths. We fold and unfold our shawls, and the men squint into the sunlight, dumb with hope. Some days they confuse the walls of their cage with their skin. Some days, the sky. They see their deaths in the sweat darkening our dresses. To sweeten the hours we share scandals from the city, how curators removed an elephant's heart from the museum because it began beating when anyone in love looked at it, how the coroner found minnows swimming in a drowned girl's lungs. They ask if it's true, if slaves are chained together on ships to prevent suicide. We say they'll never be free. They warn us one night soon the judge will wake to find his bed alive with wasps, while across town the night watchman will stare stunned at the moths circling before he realizes he's on fire.

Aloft between heaven and them, I babble the landscape—what staunch, vicious trees, what cluttered roads, slow cars. This is my country as it was gifted me—victimless, vast. The soundtrack buzzing the air around my ears continually loops ditties of eagles and oil. I can’t choose. Every moment I’m awake, aroused instrumentals channel theme songs, speaking what I cannot. I don’t ever have to come down. I can stay hooked to heaven, dictating this blandness. My flyboys memorize flip and soar. They’ll never swoop real enough to resurrect that other country, won’t ever get close enough to give name to tonight’s dreams darkening the water. I understand that somewhere it has rained.

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run, Let Poets and Historians set these forth. My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er, Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part ‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill. From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect, Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect. My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, ‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable. Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek Who lisp’d at first, in future times speak plain. By Art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits. A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits. If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope’s own child? So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie. The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. Men have precedency and still excel; It is but vain unjustly to wage war. Men can do best, and Women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

Among these latter busts we count by scores, Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,— One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear. Now read here. "Protus ends a period "Of empery beginning with a god; "Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant, "Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant: "And if he quickened breath there, 't would like fire "Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire. "A fame that he was missing, spread afar: "The world, from its four corners, rose in war, "Till he was borne out on a balcony "To pacify the world when it should see. "The captains ranged before him, one, his hand "Made baby points at, gained the chief command. "And day by day more beautiful he grew "In shape, all said, in feature and in hue, "While young Greek sculptors gazing on the child "Became, with old Greek sculpture, reconciled. "Already sages laboured to condense "In easy tomes a life's experience: "And artists took grave counsel to impart "In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art- "To make his graces prompt as blossoming "Of plentifully-watered palms in spring: "Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, "For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone, "And mortals love the letters of his name." -Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same. New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say How that same year, on such a month and day, "John the Pannonian, groundedly believed "A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved "The Empire from its fate the year before,- "Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore "The same for six years, (during which the Huns "Kept off their fingers from us) till his sons "Put something in his liquor "-and so forth. Then a new reign. Stay-"Take at its just worth " (Subjoins an annotator) "what I give "As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live "And slip away. 'T is said, he reached man's age "At some blind northern court; made, first a page, "Then tutor to the children; last, of use "About the hunting stables. I deduce "He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,' "Whereof the name in sundry catalogues "Is extant yet. A Protus of the race "Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,- "And, if the same, he reached senility." Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye, Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

On the morning of the 20th National Day my uncle came home and told us: “All our troops have got into position, for the Russians may throw an atom-bomb on us today.” After breakfast he returned to the headquarters, but I had to go to school and join the celebration. The fear oppressed my back like a bag of sand. I could not raise the little triangle flag in my hand, nor could I shout slogans with my classmates. During the break I called together my best friends and told them what would occur on this day. Benli said, “I must go home and tell my dad to kill all our chickens.” Qingping said, “I must tell my aunt not to buy a sewing machine. Who would care about clothes if that happens.” Yimin and I said nothing, but we knew what we were going to do. We decided to go to the army, for we did not want to be roasted at home like little pigs.

Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. She was a maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea. And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid When her long life hath reached its final day: Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great is passed away.

The castle clock had tolled midnight: With mattock and with spade, And silent, by the torches’ light, His corse in earth we laid. The coffin bore his name, that those Of other years might know, When earth its secrets should disclose, Whose bones were laid below. “Peace to the dead” no children sung, Slow pacing up the nave,— No prayers were read, no knell was rung, As deep we dug his grave. We only heard the winter's wind, In many a sullen gust, As, o’er the open grave inclined, We murmured, “Dust to dust!” A moonbeam from the arch’s height Streamed, as we placed the stone; The long aisles started into light, And all the windows shone. We thought we saw the banners then, That shook along the walls, Whilst the sad shades of mailèd men Were gazing on the stalls. ’Tis gone! again on tombs defaced Sits darkness more profound; And only by the torch we traced The shadows on the ground. And now the chilling, freezing air Without blew long and loud; Upon our knees we breathed one prayer, Where he slept in his shroud. We laid the broken marble floor,— No name, no trace appears,— And when we closed the sounding door, We thought of him with tears.