505 History and politics poems

We invent our gods the way the Greeks did, in our own image—but magnified. Athena, the very mother of wisdom, squabbled with Poseidon like any human sibling until their furious tempers made the sea writhe. Zeus wore a crown of lightning bolts one minute, a cloak of feathers the next, as driven by earthly lust he prepared to swoop down on Leda. Despite their power, frailty ran through them like the darker veins in the marble of these temples we call monuments. Looking at Jefferson now, I think of the language he left for us to live by. I think of the slave in the kitchen downstairs.

Baltazár went to the market and came home with a parrot. Thursdays in this town were always just so: What should have been four big potatoes and some white cheese Came home in a cage filled with green feathers and two wings. The mathematics of exchange in this world, the stomach or the heart— Which of these, how much of one for the other, Friday would have to sort out. On a Thursday afternoon The world sang, a full dinner this way coming through the air.

Over the honored bones of Boston (resting, as we say) old leaves’ bones underfoot are restless; and boys and schoolgirls going home splash through them, reciting alphabet lately received. They run the known, intone the unsure patterns, repeat the magic, nearly Grecian syllables; and little winds are winding up their strident lmno, R, S, T. She was no snowy witch, but young and turning, a mother-dear more dear now incipiently frosty; witches most live when she died, October; primly colonial, Mother Goose’s grave; who did not rhyme or gather the pages vainly: what mantic abc’s she told she dared make charming only to spell her children’s moral lives. The children passing sing the future, certainly, but knowing nothing (as the lore requires) and recommending nothing as they are merely oracles spelling their letters’ lives, not telling theirs. They have their own games not of the elder nation; certain cobwebs accommodate the young, and special weeds; and these who chant now know no gentle Sibylla but many seemingly answering leaves. What there will be of signs, of sounds so flighty and so friable, the letters as the leaves, boys and girls as letters, and of late Boston’s honorable cinders, laid quietly and always restless: maybe a daisy, my dears, or a white carnation, or only an unanswerable tenderness.

For my great aunt & Jonathan Hicks my first venture west was in Windows 98 or Independence, Missouri. class in the computer lab & we were supposed to be playing some typing game or another. the one i remember had a haunted theme. ghosts instructing us on the finer points of where to put our fingers. these were the last days before keyboards as appendage, when typing was not nature. i should’ve been letting an apparition coach me through QWERTY but rather i was at the general store deciding between ammo & axles, considering the merits of being a banker or carpenter. too young to know what profession would get me to the Willamette Valley in the space of a 40-minute period. i aimed my rifle with the arrow keys, tapped the space bar with a prayer for meat to haul back to the wagon. this game came difficult as breathing underwater after trying to ford a river. i was no good at survival. somebody always fell ill or out into the river. each new day scurvy or a raid was the fate of a character named for my crush or my baby sister. this loss i know, how to measure what it means to die premature before a school period ends. i can’t understand the game coming to a late end. an elderly daughter grieving her elderly mother. reading the expansive obit in a suburban Detroit church is a confusing newness. when the old do the thing the world expects i retreat into my former self. focus on beating video games I’ve always sucked at, brush up on Chicago Bulls history, re-memorize the Backstreet Boys catalog, push away whatever woman is foolhardy enough to be on any road with me. i pioneer my way away from all the known world. i look at homicide rates & wish we all expired the way i know best. i pray for a senseless, poetic departure. i pray for my family to not be around to miss me while i’m still here. i want a short obituary, a life brief & unfulfilled, the introductory melody before a beat’s crescendo into song, the game over somewhere in the Great Plains. i want to spare my descendants the confusion of watching a flame flicker slow. keep them from being at a funeral thumbing the faded family pictures like worn keys, observing the journey done, the game won, the west conquered.

Through darkness they came, covered in ash, scarred by depths and distance, they bore salt and fire, breath steaming at edges of decks, hands clutching railings, their bodies dizzied by the lurching vessel, trunks pulled by hand,Where are you from? I unwrapped my legacy from cloth, the marble Buddha from my grandfather, ancient as the sea-stained covers of his sutras, the briny odor of carp centuries old.What are you? Not only where they were from but who they were and would become. His strange past and the mystery of my own face,American? this question flawed as we all appeared, my grandfather's birthplace the half of me I lightened, bleaching my black hair to reach my girlfriend Amber's blonde. In her candlelit room, I touched the mission photo of her rubbing ointment on the burns of a hibakusha. Where are water-filled troughs and the horses' manes my grandfather combed. The hay he bundled in twine,you from? Could he have smoothed names engraved in granite, the scars on the woman's skin, targets raised on maps? In a light blast What are a city of nips was erased,you? A blank scape,Go back no trace of his childhood farm in Hiroshima,to where I turned away from the chalkboard scrawled with Enola Gay,you are a button pushed, from a bomb dropped, at Amber's picnic they bowed over grace, and I looked up, didn't say Amen. Everything rises when the ground's skin is broken.

— for the members of Oshugó Àgàn At first a child rolled off a reed mat a height of no consequence Later the bald ageless vulture circles the hill the man climbs When the owners of the land arrived they brought beaded bag in their search Bag beaded big enough to house the echoes that gave birth to sketches of words on dust Bag deep enough to circle obstacles that would sprout upon birth They reached a clean house chalked walls of peace a person of peace They planted a pair of brass scepters illumined male / female short legs kneeling long torso crisscrossed by arms hands clenching some secret or just its thumbs They saw three to be balanced— Earth & us Impermanence & love water & its gourd as gorge fish & whirling water How they all seemed dependent on each other There is balance where there are three . . .

They slept and ate like us. Feral they were not. The intricacy of their handiwork bespoke a fineness we’d be taught. Yet we wiped them out. It was eerily easy to do, although they knew we were coming and knew we knew they knew. Not only did they not resist our guns like bloody hacking coughs in their libraries and hospitals, their bedrooms and their schools— they would not acknowledge us. We felt like fools. There was no keening. Even the children did not cry. It was as if meaning inhered so deeply in their daily lives we could not touch it; nor would they quit living to be slaughtered, it was so inviolate.

I. Riverside Drive, 1929 “ ‘Good-by, Ralph. It should end some other way. Not this,’ Corinna said. ‘Now go away.’ No. Rhymes. It’s ludicrous. Try ‘Dear, good-by.’ No. Repetitious. Maybe ‘Dear, farewell.’ No. Stagy. Out of character. Oh, hell. Time for a drink.” The Smith-Corona heaves As he retracts his knickerbockered knees To rise. Outside, a southbound tug receives The sun broadside, and the bold Linit sign Pales on the Jersey shore. Fresh gin, tk-tk- Tk-tk-tk-tk, quite clearly fills his glass Half full from the unlabelled bottle. Now His boyish fingers grip the siphon’s worn Wire basketweave and press the trigger down To utter soda water. One long sip Subtracts a third of it for carrying. On the way back, he pauses at the door Beside his football picture, where a snore Attests that all is well and promises Him time to work. To work: before the tall, Black, idle typewriter, before the small Black type elitely inching on the blank White sea of bond, he quails and takes a drink. First, demolitions: the slant shilling mark Defaces half a hundred characters With killing strike-overs. Now, a new start: “ ‘Good-by, Ralph. I don’t know why it should end Like tihs,’ Corinna said. ‘But be my friend.’ ’’ II. Hotel Shawmut, Boston, 1946 (From a commercial travellers’ hotel, Professor S. jumped straight down into hell, While—jug-o’-rum-rum—engines made their way Beneath him, one so cold December day). While he prepares his body, cold gears mate And chuckle in the long draught of the street. He shaves; his silver spectacles peruse An issue of The North American Muse. He uses Mum; outside him in the hall, Maids talk their language; snow begins to fall. He puts on his old clothes. The narrow room Has nothing, nothing to discuss with him Except what time you should send out your suit And shoes for cleaning. Now he stamps his foot: Outside the window, not saying anything, Appears a seagull, standing on one wing; A long-awaited colleague. With glad cry, Professor S. embraces the white sky. While S. demolishes a taxicab, His spectacles review the life of Crabbe. (From a commercial travellers’ hotel, Profesor S. descended into hell. But once in April in New Haven he Kissed a friend’s sister in the gloom of trees.) III. Deus Ex Machina, Flushing, 1966 La Guardia. Knee-deep in storyboards, I line up for the shuttle, which arrives Outside the gate and off-loads shuffling streams Of transferees—each in his uniform Of sober stuff and nonsense, with a case Of talents at his side—who pass our line Of somber-suited shuttlers carrying Our cases on. Then one appears, a rare Bird in migration to New York, a bare- Crowned singer of the stony coast of Maine, And of Third Avenue in rain; a bard. The way of the almost-extinct is hard. He peers through tortoise-shelly glasses at The crowd, the place, the year. He is not here And is. In his check jacket, he describes An arc of back and arms as he proceeds Between two city starlings, carrying His store of songs in a beat leather grip And a dried drop of his brown lamb’s blood on His wilted collar. A Time-reader in Glenurquhart plaid identifies his bird— “Godwit, the poet”—to a flannel friend. The bard stalks on on his two legs, aware He has been spotted; in, I’d say, some pain At an existence which anticipates Its end and in the meantime tolerates Intolerance of the wing, the whim, the one Unanswerable voice which sings alone. IV. Lament of the Makers, Including Me: 1967 New-minted coin, my poet’s mask (A small denomination in Demotic nickel, brass, or tin) Passes from hand to hand to hand Beyond my six acres of land. Did I desire such currency Among the meritocracy Of tri-named ladies who preserve The flame of art in mackled hands, Of universitarians And decimal librarians Who shore and store up textual Addenda, of asexual Old arbiters and referees Who startle letters with a sneeze, Of critics whose incautious cough Halts a new wave or sends it off To break on uninhabited shores, Of publishers, insensual bores Procuring art—“A maidenhead!”— To Jack the Reader, of well-read Young underfaced admirers who Impinge on undefended you At readings in all colleges? No, I did not; but knowledge is All-powerless to seek redress From injuries to innocence. I think continually of Abjurers, who, fed on self-love, Housed in an incommodious cave, Clothed in three-button sackcloth, crave Indulgence of no audience But their own laudatory ears. Alack, this anchoritic few Dwindles; these ticking times are too Struck with celebrity’s arrears, And heap past-due advances on The embryonic artisan; All hours from dawn to night are lauds, All auditors are all applause (However electronic), all Tempters conspire in Adam’s fall. The world turned upside-down, without A beast in view, without a doubt, Recalls its exiles and bestows On them the palm, the bays, the rose (Art sick?), the Laurel Wormser Prize, Whose debased dollar only buys More nods, more goods, more fame, more praise: Not art, as in the rude old days. Now worldward poets turn and say, Timor vitae conturbat me.

(variations on the testimony and excommunication of Anne Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1637-1638) I. Given to sweet motion the wilderness believes one fair one of flowers to be a moral blossom. We go so far. Walks now, only legend remaining. "I came afterwards to the window when you was writing." But in their documents her judges had written "Insolent." In its branches spirit shelters air with wailing. The air thunders unavailingly there. "Fear is a snare. Why should I be afraid." If I was in error but not mistaken, if my glass was gone but not broken (defaced) 2. My path illuminates all the interior of a dusky mirror, the left shoulder higher than the right is in memory's intricate. We must study distinctions aftertimes will adore. if the glass be taken away, we shall see more. God is going. Walks now, only God remaining. (wanting) an immediate promise He will deliver them (wanting)         in a day of trouble These emotions she retained in the universal heart, in a new eye: rational charity active piety appearing as blindness appears in the face in bright sunlight exactly like a smile. 3. "Here is a great stir about graces and looking to hearts, but give me Christ. Tell me not of meditations and duties, but tell me of Christ." Christ is one thing. The soul is another the wild outskirt of the earth will prove the ruin of. And mischief, the poor babe, grew in the forest. (defaced) A stick a bunch of rags a flower need no transformation. The hour given to sweet motion is a soul. I came to the window when God was going. In low condition, little number and remoteness things outbreaks of temper had a kind of value and even a comfort. 4. A memory a promise or a flower sheared away was not made but taken from a bush of wild roses. Seeing them, she began to cry out for a red rose. "God has left me to distinguish between the voice of my Beloved and John Baptist and Antichrist." But daybreak unites what belongs together, and there are two kinds of distinction. There are (something wanting) "What he declares he does not know himself." I know a day of small and a day of infancy. At the window vividly just now and entirely inarticulate the form given to sweet motion broke apart and there's colors all kinds all round. 5. Of realities surrounding us, their pith and substance was wasted wronged misplaced. "I desire to speak to our teacher." In a state of desire, what belongs together ignores the barriers. Daybreak have you any word your own or I one fair one remaining? God is gone, only a window and a wilderness remaining, not made but taken, thinnest fantasy of beginnings taken from a bush of wild red roses.

Some(where a) woman wears the face once given. Possessions scarce we go halves on slant of eye & span of palm with cousin & other ghosts. Where is the man with the face lent mother? Fathers rare;infant found at Shinkyo police station box—official shoes careened around fortune of Name & birth, pin & note. Elsewhere (Norway, Australia) another Korean National bears the imprint of my din. Cribs, nurse, hands, rice-milk powder, down & rocked—carefully dated checks. American/Father asks Why. We don’t speak. Years burn to decades, this permanent occupation.