505 History and politics poems

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang, Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm. They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said, Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm. I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream, And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this? They said, my poets, singers of my song, We cannot tell, since all we tell you is But history, we speak but of the dead. And of the dead they said such history (Their beards were blazing with the truth of it) As made of much of me a mystery.

Missing from the National Museum, Baghdad, April 2003 No light can gild the sun god’s cheek but strains through burlap now, Phoibos the refugee, his head a marble cabbage in a sack jouncing east by pickup down a dirt track across Seleucid wastes, Parthian plains, once more fortune’s tourist, bobbing free. Or not—just stashed behind a rubbish mound where bare-boned goats might crop a scraggy meal, scant miles from the museum’s shattered room. Stripped of laurels, his oracles, his loom of sacred strings, no Horai here spin round, just pacing men who wait to close the deal. A goatherd sings, slings a Kalashnikov: the godhead mute since looters hacked it off.

In the frozen square, the student asks me if I will sell him the books from my backpack. He hides them under his winter coat. Steam rises from the whole wheat rolls we break open at the breakfast table. We drink hot apple tea and pronounce the skyline “charming.” In a jail a man counts the visible bones, and recounts them in the blaze of morning. To turn a self to light proves painful — each piece must be dissected in turn; you pass through every feeling imaginable, so many you might make a dictionary — dread to disgust, delight to degradation. The prisoner remembers wanting only to read as if in a fever — running fingers over pyramids of words as if he might translate himself from this life to a more vivid existence in which he cuts open the pages with a knife in plain sight of everyone like a man eating meat and potatoes at the dinner table. Not that world; this one where blue light and sharpened files, where identikit and stamps on passports, where the book in his back- pack is a crime, and I have sold him down the river for ideas I barely value — the volumes flung carelessly across my hotel room, while he picks mushrooms on the edge of dread, pallid ghosts of what won’t speak or be spoken. Or where I remember what it is to be present in the world, and I turn away, unable to bear it — so much light and dread, so much in the darkness growing or simply how hard to ever remain in place.

It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which, to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters, unwithstood," Roused though it be full often to a mood Which spurns the check of salutary bands, That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands Should perish; and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.—In every thing we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving. Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding. Wives who laugh at passive spouses; Theatres, and meeting-houses; Balls, where simp’ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish. Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing; Placemen mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal. Authors who can’t earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking; Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking. Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o’er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring. Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken. Some in luxury delighting; More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid. Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff’rent roads. Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen’rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit, Taking place of vet’ran merit. Honest men who can’t get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded; Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; The worm—the canker, and the grief Are mine alone! The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some Volcanic Isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze A funeral pile. The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of Love I cannot share, But wear the chain. But 'tis not thus—and 'tis not here Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now, Where Glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow. The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, Glory and Greece around us see! The Spartan borne upon his shield Was not more free. Awake (not Greece—she is awake!) Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down Unworthy Manhood—unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be. If thou regret'st thy Youth,why live? The land of honourable Death Is here:—up to the Field, and give Away thy breath! Seek out—less often sought than found— A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy Ground, And take thy rest.

We must stop bragging. There are limits For us to the cold and the twelfth night Marks them all. Just off the coast of Maine The lobster boats pass, dragging their nets. Capsize once in a while, in water Like that you die, that’s all, that water Isn’t even frozen. Not even Frozen, and that’s as cold as it gets. The hearts of birds beat voraciously So they keep warm, so if you put out A feeder, keep it full of the seeds Their hearts feed on, then it is only When their food runs out that you find them Inexpressibly taut in hollows, And that’s as cold as it ever gets.

“Jena before us in the lovely valley” thus my mother on a postcard from a walking holiday on the banks of the Saale, she was spending a week at the spa of Kosen; long forgotten now, the ancestor no more, her script a subject for graphology, years of becoming, years of illusion, only those words I’ll never forget. It wasn’t a great picture, no class, there was not enough blossom to justify lovely, poor paper, no pulp-free mass, also the hills weren’t green with vineyards, but she was from back-country hovels, so the valleys probably did strike her as lovely, she didn’t need laid paper or four-color print, she supposed others would see what she had seen. It was something said at a venture, an exaltation had prompted it, the landscape had moved her, so she asked the waiter for a postcard, and yet—

From the dim hallway, walls swollen with summer damp. Concave threshold to the morning’s livid light. When my father said Gerrard Street East, his voice. The passing subway tremors upwards, into me, reverberates in 
ligaments and membranes. On canvas shoes through minor parks, a pinball in a rudderless machine. My father, transiently animate. Funny in the ebbing language, 
bantering with shopkeepers. A lifeguard pours bleach in the fractured blue wading pool, sloshes it out with her legs. If  I could, I’d view a produce stand as he did, fill a paper bag with dillweed, bitter melon, ladyfingers. Miraculous reversal poster in the window of the Portuguese 
apothecary. Who lived where he never resembled somebody. Belled, metal restaurant elephant. They’re barely open. The woman fills and seals samosas in the uproar of a standing fan. I have tea. Father, dayflower, I keep arriving at this dead end where the menu says exotic, stamped with sickle chilis. The fan blades clatter frantically in their cage. A ghetto blaster spools ghazals. Her husband, over the counter, shouts:The pavements here are very bad. You must take your walks on the pitch, in circles. This is what all of us do.

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath these leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death. And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, That pave with level flags their burial-place, Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down And broken by Moses at the mountain's base. The very names recorded here are strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for he created Death!" The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, What persecution, merciless and blind, Drove o'er the sea — that desert desolate — These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire; Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, The wasting famine of the heart they fed, And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. Anathema maranatha! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where'er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. For in the background figures vague and vast Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, And all the great traditions of the Past They saw reflected in the coming time. And thus forever with reverted look The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead. But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again.