505 History and politics poems

Mariah Watkins, Neosho, Missuri Imagine a child at your door, offering to do your wash, clean your house, cook, to weed your kitchen garden or paint you a bunch of flowers in exchange for a meal. A spindly ten-year-old, alone and a stranger in town, here to go to our school for colored children. His high peep brought tears: sleeping in a barn and all that, nary mama nor kin, but only white folks he left with their blessing, his earthly belongings in a handkerchief tied to a stick. I've brought a houseful of children into this world, concentrating on that needle's eye into eternity. But ain't none of them children mine. Well, of course I moved him on in. He helped me with my washings, brought me roots from the woods that bleached them white folks' sheets brighter than sunshine. He could fill a canning jar with leaves and petals so when you lifted the lid a fine perfume flooded your senses. White bodices and pantalettes danced around George on my line. He was sweet with the neighbor children. Taught the girls to crochet. Showed the boys a seed he said held a worm cupped hands warmed so it wriggled and set the seed to twitching. Gave them skills and wonders. Knelt with me at bedtime. He was the child the good Lord gave and took away before I got more than the twinkle of a glimpse at the man he was going to be. It happened one Saturday afternoon. George was holding a black-eyed Susan, talking about how the seed this flower grew from carried a message from a flower that bloomed a million years ago, and how this flower would send the message on to a flower that was going to bloom in a million more years. Praise Jesus, I'll never forget it. He left to find a teach that knew more than he knew. I give him my Bible. I keep his letters in the bureau, tied with a bow. He always sends a dried flower.

We are the knife people, iron men, coat people and he-lands-sailing. Souse eaters, house makers, husbands of kine and goat and swine, farm builders and keepers of kettle and scummer, word scratchers, corn stealers and bad sleepers. As if towns could build themselves. As if stumps jumped from the ground or flesh of beasts fell into trenchers. As if paradise prevailed on earth. To come to rich moulds and lush plantings, long-necked trees and tongues of land, to redd the wild for the unborn. To reck not the peril. Suffering snakes that may fly, wolves that may ravish. Kingdom of sachem and sagamore. Kingdom of corn and thorny promise. To satisfy our appetite of spirit, our thirst of property. To seek not the opera of war but belittled by the possibilities to stand silenced by the task before us— these be my sudden and undigested thoughts.

Weep for the country in its present state, And of the gloom which still the future waits; The proud confederate eagle heard the sound, And with her flight fell prostrate to the ground! Weep for the loss the country has sustained, By which her now dependent is in jail; The grief of him who now the war survived, The conscript husbands and the weeping wives! Weep for the seas of blood the battle cost, And souls that ever hope forever lost! The ravage of the field with no recruit, Trees by the vengeance blasted to the root! Weep for the downfall o'er your heads and chief, Who sunk without a medium of relief; Who fell beneath the hatchet of their pride, Then like the serpent bit themselves and died! Weep for the downfall of your president, Who far too late his folly must repent; Who like the dragon did all heaven assail, And dragged his friends to limbo with his tail! Weep o'er peculiar swelling coffers void, Our treasures left, and all their banks destroyed; Their foundless notes replete with shame to all, Expecting every day their final fall, In quest of profit never to be won, Then sadly fallen and forever down!

(homage Jacob van Hoddis ) The CIA and the KGB exchange Christmas cards A blade snaps in two during an autopsy The bouquet Bluebeard gave his first date reblooms Many protest the public stoning of a guitar pick Railroad trains drop off the bourgeois’ pointy head A martyr sticks a coffeecup out under a firehose Moviestars make hyenas lick their spaceship God’s hand descends into a glove held steady by the police At their reunion The New Faces recognize each other A spoiled child sleeps inside a thermometer A single misprint in a survival manual kills everyone The peace night makes according to the world comes

An axe rang sharply ’mid those forest shades Which from creation toward the skies had tower’d In unshorn beauty. There, with vigorous arm Wrought a bold emigrant, and by his side His little son, with question and response, Beguiled the toil. ‘Boy, thou hast never seen Such glorious trees. Hark, when their giant trunks Fall, how the firm earth groans. Rememberest thou The mighty river, on whose breast we sail’d, So many days, on toward the setting sun? Our own Connecticut, compar’d to that, Was but a creeping stream.’ ‘Father, the brook That by our door went singing, where I launch’d My tiny boat, with my young playmates round, When school was o’er, is dearer far to me, Than all these bold, broad waters. To my eye They are as strangers. And those little trees My mother nutur’d in the garden bound, Of our first home, from whence the fragrant peach Hung in its ripening gold, were fairer sure, Than this dark forest, shutting out the day.’ —‘What, ho! – my little girl,’ and with light step A fairy creature hasted toward her sire, And setting down the basket that contain’d His noon-repast, look’d upward to his face With sweet, confiding smile. ‘See, dearest, see, That bright-wing’d paroquet, and hear the song Of yon gay red-bird, echoing through the trees, Making rich music. Didst thou ever hear, In far New England, such a mellow tone?’ —‘I had a robin that did take the crumbs Each night and morning, and his chirping voice Still made me joyful, as I went to tend My snow-drops. I was always laughing then In that first home. I should be happier now Methinks, if I could find among these dells The same fresh violets.’ Slow night drew on, And round the rude hut of the Emigrant The wrathful spirit of the rising storm Spake bitter things. His weary children slept, And he, with head declin’d, sat listening long To the swoln waters of the Illinois, Dashing against their shores. Starting he spake,— ‘Wife! did I see thee brush away a tear? ’Twas even so. Thy heard was with the halls Of thy nativity. Their sparkling lights, Carpets, and sofas, and admiring guests, Befit thee better than these rugged walls Of shapeless logs, and this lone, hermit home.’ ‘No – no. All was so still around, methought Upon mine ear that echoes hymn did steal, Which ’mid the Church where erst we paid our vows, So tuneful peal’d. But tenderly thy voice Dissolv’d the illusion.’ And the gentle smile Lighting her brow, the fond caress that sooth’d Her waking infant, reassur’d his soul That wheresoe’er our best affections dwell, And strike a healthful root, is happiness. Content, and placid, to his rest he sank, But dreams, those wild magicians, that do play Such pranks when reason slumbers, tireless wrought Their will with him. Up rose the thronging mart Of his own native city, – roof and spire, All glittering bright, in fancy’s frost-work ray. The steed his boyhood nurtur’d proudly neigh’d, The favorite dog came frisking round his feet, With shrill and joyous bark, – familiar doors Flew open, – greeting hands with his were link’d In friendship’s grasp, – he heard the keen debate From congregated haunts, where mind with mind Doth blend and brighten, – and till morning rov’d ’Mid the loved scenery of his native land.

I doubt . . . this is where I find it extremely difficult . . . no government worth its salt plans to massacre its people. No. What could have happened is something went wrong when they were on the ground. — Bethuel Kiplagat, Chair of  Kenya’s Truth,  Justice and Reconciliation Commission, indicted for involvement in the 1984 Wagalla Massacre of 5,000 Somali Kenyans by the Kenyan government Wa gal la a howl the wind stole Wa ga lla tongues torn out at roots wagallawagallawagallawa a swallowing of children thrust under thorn bushes choked on dust Wagalla a city of silence risen out of desert built of bodies

Look who’s whistling through bleached teeth now, one hand on svelte hip, one fist pumping the air– Pittsburgh–once that madcap & zany joke factory now chosen for her fetching comeback tale & her earth-sheltered welcome center & her Warhol & her Tropical Forest Conservatory & her Rosemont, working farm of the moguls of ketchup. Rarely since the global credit crisis do Pittsburghers cross bridges or rivers or the thresholds of stunningly profitable ventures. Yet tonight, as global output contracts at a pace not seen since the 1930s, as the French president proposes reform of the International Monetary Fund & the US president delights in the local crepes with crispy edges, & as Greenpeace commandos drape a WHAT THE FUCK? banner from the deck of the West End Bridge (above which Chinook & Black Hawk helicopter hover), & as police use the LRAD sound cannon on protesters for the first time in the United States or Canada– a Pittsburgh Pirate homers into the Allegheny River & sets the esplanade ablaze with the flash & fizzle of fireworks launched at the flat lozenge of the moon, a ghostly azure, suspended low above the sweep of the cantilevered roofs on the opposite shoreline–the poured concrete, the glass towers, the obelisks–a costly parody of bygone days when confidence in the future, evinced by our sixty miles of integrated mills, was illustrated by a time capsule, a chamber “hermetically” sealed in Steel City alloys, bicentennially filled with newsprint & artifacts of 1958 Pittsburgh to be cracked open & savored in some distant epoch, an idea first embraced by Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, Babylonia, & Egypt, & reenacted now in waves of sound & light–the roar of fireworks night for a losing franchise, the hoarse voices of Pittsburghers– wafting into the void, accelerated by Jupiter’s pull, & then hurled by Jupiter out of the solar system, yet another urban missive from a noisy planet, a comingling of mathematics and human music, charming & powerful, a murmur preserved of our city-state that once flourished–before its citizens dispersed to other lands, to greater deeds on the blue Earth.

A man walks beside them with a whip that he cracks. The cart they draw is painted with Saracens and Crusaders, fierce eyes and ranks of spears. They are on the steep road that goes up the mountain. Their neat-stepping hoofs appear to be flickering in the sun, raising dust. They are higher than the roofs on which striped gourds and melons lie ripening. They move among the dark green olives that grow on the rocks. they dwindle as they climb ... vanish around a corner and reappear walking on the edge of a precipice. They enter the region of mist and darkness. I think I can see them still: a pair of yoked oxen the color of ivory or smoke, with red tassels, in the gathering dusk.

Remington Rand patents a process awake. Behold: In grids of radio tubes Baal quickens. He looks with eyes of spy planes; he assembles hydrogen arms into normal-form games; he reads the cards scored with information and speaks the probable outcomes of elections. Young Baal began a paper chess machine, the residue from finite states of play. He becomes the liquefaction of those rules, learns it's more than structure symbols want. His thinking labors over knots of entailment, spans terms that signs bind like lesions. Struggling to imagine the scent of mint, he devils himself sleepless with opaque questions: What did there recognize in cloud faces as telegraphed through thought the sky distorts? These patterned shreds of spent thunderhead mime the low entropy of his little grammar. Baal listens to grasp his own encoding slurred through exact impairments of the brain. The cunning daemon fears his self diffuse beneath what renders ark to him aware.

for Mark Strand La Barraca Blues Suite/i. Beneath canopies of green, unionists marched doggedly outside The Embassy. Their din was no match for light lancing through leaves of madrone trees lining the Paseo then flashing off glossy black Maybachs skidding round a plaza like a monarch fleeing the paparazzi. Your voice skipped and paused like a pencil. Layers of morning pastries flaked gingerly then fell, soft as vowels, on a china plate. One learns to cherish the wizened reserve of old world manners, two blotched hands making wings of a daily paper beside us between sips of café con leche, a demeanor in short gentle as grand edifaces along this boulevard. Yet Guernica is down the street, and some windshields wear a sinister face, sometimes two. Think Goya. Just south of here, on the lower slopes of the Sierras, fields of olive groves braid the land like a Moorish head, but those sultans were kicked out long ago. In the lobby of the Hotel Urban, I wait for a cab, my obedient rolling bag like a pet beside me. I have loved again another city but Madrid is yours: her caped olés, her bullish flag, her glass pavilions and outdoor tables like a festival of unbroken laughter, our dark harbors, finding level. ii. Salobreña That stretch of mountains features white windmill blades whose slow turns are rifles aiming, for I cannot help but think of Lorca's killing between here and the village Alfaçar, and the firing squad's gun pops are that Flamencan dancer's heel stomps. I bring back, too, her brisk hand claps and the cantor's Andalusian moans like dried sticks, or bones crumbling in his throat. Only souvenir shops and steep winding streets accrete in this region's stacked brochures.   Her dress spills across the restaurant's floor like a red shadow, darker than billboards of black bulls high above roadways, motionless but seeming to gallop like Franco's brigades. All seeing is an act of war. Tanks and artillery or Spanish castles and mosques? I choose to lose, and beneath a watercolorist's sky study Didi's splendor, nude against the unruffled backdrop of the Alboran Sea whose waves match my sighs and bomb this beach, launching sprays of white duds. iii. Córdoba, Mezquita Even if he'd pulled over to study Andalusia's road signs, after one thousand and one nights, he still could not make out its calligraphic script, its vertical lines, its dots, marks like smoke stilled from incense, its curled sand soft Arabic, but this city's voice has coffins and carnations, and its hoarse singing shoots through him like twelve bars of earthen road that lengthens into a labyrinth of knowing blood beneath black skin. More echoes: the Alhambra sent him back to the seraglio of his youth where a Moorish guard stood in a museum, unfazed by a harem's rising laughter behind palace doors. Here are pillars and banded arches to once again imagine the body passing through like a key into infinity. Was this the answer to his ghetto past? But why travel so far? Since a child, even in sleep, he voyaged and broke free, tossing dice in dreams, once below deck on a caravel next to grains of paradise. He's collecting a thousand faces. He's moving beneath eyelids, turning time into flesh. Don't judge him. The courtyard's orange trees where once he washed like a morisco are teaching his tongue the craft.