445 Religion poems

refuge temple 254 Purdy Street, Buffalo, NY, childhood home of Lucille Clifton There will be another storm always on the air Or in the air or are you the air Cold unrecognizable following The inside road This vessel bears one through Snow or time to find the house Paint peeling and maybe unfamiliar but the address Is to a place that doesn’t exist anymore An empty lot Now owned by the woman Next door who leases it to a Storefront church that needs the space for parking I take a selfie with the snowbank 254 Purdy Street Sunday morning they will plow and cars will fill the place Worshippers filing next door Names of the family who lived here forgotten Sayles their name was Sayles Well there’s Miss Bowden says the neighbor Who lives over there Ninety years old Lived here her whole life If anyone’d remember she would Though if the house don’t hold against the world And the body don’t hold against the world Snow falling down What can hold The church house the neighbor next door The snow Old Miss Bowden This empty lot We empty now Everybody drive home Song done over Snow river hover House is gone Stormsent era That Miss Bowden may remember The twelve-fingered girl who lived here We tell the neighbor: her name was Lucille Playing in the street Afraid of the dark Bringing the light salon des refusés East Side, Cleveland, OH, apartment building of Julie Patton In the house of Julie Patton Bumblebees do sing pollen In the cave of ears Every thing listens Jimi, Barack, and Marilyn Buck The saints of the place In vigil of excellent beings Light poles hold typical beasts Though here they empty themselves Into me Orange spaces do make A world again for though the gods are mythic The goddesses spin Dear Julie sing Me through the long hallway The dark one sleeved in your mother’s States of mind State of mine is the one that opens my body In heat through dark and salted moments Body is a book House does quiver Unwritten the way of how to find you House is the book In the language of feathers that launch Whose heart could race Winter air winter season that rushes How we in dark are slung The dark that opens its hallways Time mastered by Shiva and Hanuman I did stand in the empty space Filled by snow Then here in the sun-flirted front room Watched by Saint Nina Simone and Saint Joan Baez and Saint 
Buffy Sainte-Marie I wonder forward in Sapphic tongue Who is remember me Who is open me with their tongue Who languages the space of a house that don’t exist Better thought sun see Julie sing sanctified Sing swung sing one and one and one and one school house Barrington, Rhode Island, right near the Bay, home of C.D. Wright 
and Forrest Gander When she gives me directions and describes it to me I expect a red-room schoolhouse Driving across the water from Providence Into the stream-laced far shore Far shore where a boat unlands To determine the shape of what isn’t There I drive past wrong streets Wrong houses places whose bells I ring Stranger in the forest and dark-skinned too Where do I belong From the bathhouse I came Where I worshiped at all manner of strange altars Does this make me more or less human Tongue makes you human And how it translates the body into language To find the door as it was described to me Frosted glass and Japanese characters lining it School saying the language of the sun No sums add up here But she calls me in And I frown to know long to know What holds the house against the world How will words survive the dissolution of the body Of the planet’s core Sore and soar it came down through the cloud cover Gray-white curtains House of a dozen languages At the cold lake the far away lake She grabbed me post-lecture where I told about how I could not translate the words of the poet until I came to her own sun-loved city She begged me to always love all manner of strangers I thought she meant the regions of the body I’d have promised her anything though years later in Rhode Island Named for an island no one can find Lover I love you forever House that disappeared Books that live in the air Island that no one knows While on Purdy Street good people park their cars in the snow Go inside and sing We don’t have nothing more than this anymore No planet no lover no words no nothing no more

This misalliance follows the custom for female children To adhere to maternal practices While the atheist father presides over the prattle of the churchgoer with ironical commentary    from his arm-chair But by whichever religious route to brute reality our forebears speed us There is often a pair of idle adult accomplices in duplicity to impose upon their brood an assumed acceptance of the grace of God defamed as human megalomania seeding the Testament with inconcievable chastisement and of Christ who come with his light of toilless lilies To say “fear not   it is I” wanting us to be fearful He who bowed the ocean tossed with holy feet which supposedly dead are suspended over head neat- ly crossed in anguish wounded with red varnish From these slow-drying bloods of mysticism mysteriously the something-soul emerges miserably and instinct (of economy) in every race for reconstructing debris has planted an avenging face in outer darkness . . . The lonely peering eye of humanity looked into the Néant and turned away . . . Ova’s consciousness impulsive to commit itself to justice —to arise and walk its innate     straight way out of the accidence of circumstance— collects the levitate chattels of its will and makes for the magnetic horizon of liberty with the soul’s foreverlasting opposition to disintegration So this child of Exodus with her heritage of emigration often “sets out to seek her fortune” in her turn trusting to terms of literature dodging the breeders’ determination not to return “entities sent on consignment” by their maker Nature except in a condition of moral effacement Lest Paul and Peter never notice the creatures ever had had Fathers and Mothers They were disgraced in their duty should such spirits take an express passage through the family bodies to arrive at Eternity as lovely     as they originally promised So on whatever days she chose to “run away” the very street corners of Kilburn close in upon Ova to deliver her into the hands of her procreators Oracle of civilization ‘Thou shalt not live by dreams alone but by every discomfort that proceedeth out of legislation’

you have to understand it was so hot sand as far as the eye could see sand in teeth a sealess life every step a sinking a scratch every storm more sand no sweat when we danced pure salt in our lovemaking i tried to spit once it came out like a whistle my first period curry powder old wives spoke of tears we thought they were senile laughter was our wettest thing we prayed often to no one we believed in music dry palms clapping dust on ankle bracelets we threw tabla and daff caught spirit and sagat a blaring life the wailing or caesarean births widows' eyes wept wind even our tongues were tanned something sun-dried in every recipe rays were babies' first words you have to understand we forgot how to be thirsty mud by then was primitive splashing the stuff of legend only giddiness quenched us we were dizzy all the time in the world all the time then we heard him grumbling to himself something about forty something about a flood clad in sheep's wool he reeked of wolf shit something about monogamy something about shelter i thought: this must be heatstroke i thought: the brain of a six-hundred-year-old i thought: he is a conceptual artist the ark an installation his masterpiece took years took trees got bigger he was our favorite dirty joke beloved schizophrenic neighbor then he started preaching then he kidnapped pigs mosquitos doves things that wanted to eat each other stuffed onto the same boat we threw our heads back we slapped ashy knees we mooned him threw hot stones we streaked whistled in his face kicked the baking ship laughter was our thunder thing the lucky ones died laughing for centuries he warned us condescending motherfucker foaming at the mouth sweat dripping from his beard condensation how did we miss it? i have no words for the first drop cooling the cheek grandfathers raised their arms lightning made the children leap sizzle gave way to drizzle humidity taught humility we opened our mouths swallowing everything the clouds begat clouds began to bite us back panic soaked our slouching spines the instruments drowned first we played them sopping out of tune denial gave way to rivers i fell into a puddle my very first shiver the shock of cold water made me orgasm so all the times before had been dry heave? so this was mourning this was mikveh? the sky from blue to za'atar hail we choked god's vomit filled our lungs apologies bellyflopped reaching went out of reach we ran from high desert to highest mountain to whirlpool or choral grief if noah had keen merciful he would have taught us how to swim instead he saved two mice muttered prayers shut the door the best belly dancers became mermaids the dinosaurs learned to fly we never saw a rainbow our grave stones coral reef

When he movd into the house he wanted us to stomp & pray out the evil spirits just in case they’d be there. How cld they when a medicine woman lived on the place & left it to the church when she went to happier grounds? But a truck hauling brush turnd on the road & he jumped up screaming— deer prowler at the antlered beast. We danced out the spirits he carried on the place. How now pow wow he jumps in the sow-yard with the bow- wow cow. We passed the spirits to chickens to peck their legs— Eeeeevil spirits pock-marked as the dartboard. W/ marbles shooting rabbit eyes we stompd wild fires he once built in his head, still haunted him as though evil spirits could open a medicine woman’s door, climb in her unpainted windows, crawl through yellowed wallpaper armoured w/ prayer-chants. We whooped & hawed until he sd nuf. The house barricaded from deer prowlers from under his headband.

for John Grant My father-in-law writes from Umbria (where peasants eat songbirds for lunch and pray beneath frescoes by Giotto): Saturday, 30 Jan. (last day of the season wherein big men can kill little birds). Lyndon Johnson, while being escorted by a young Marine who said, “That one over there is your helicopter, Sir,” replied, placing his arm around the boy, “Son, they’re all my helicopters.” Sam said, “I might be white bread, but there is one pissed-off nigger in my heart.” McPherson says he doesn’t see anything in the world worth coming back for. He wants to get off the wheel, says, “I don’t want to come back as anything — not even a bumblebee.” So I say, “Oh, Jim, you’d make a good bumblebee,” but I was thinking: That should be enough for anybody’s God. It would be trite to describe the clocksmith’s house — the way it sounded like bees in there. “You can never have enough clocks in your house.” This from a man who had thousands in his. I asked, “You probably don’t even hear them anymore.” He said, “I hear them when they stop.” Lyle said, “It’s all right to be a fool; it’s just not all right to be a old fool.” Steve, the banjo wasn’t all they smashed. It was every window. It was every thing I had. You don’t want to feel the wind blow through your house that way. Another friend said, “I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes.”

For Nathan Gebert I The chair from Goodwill smelled of mildew. I sat with Sister Ann, a Franciscan. In her small office, at the Cenacle Retreat House, right off Dixie Highway in Lantana, Florida, I began my story— it was an interview, much of life is an interview. She said I did not need to pay her, but donations, yes, donations were appreciated: they could be left anonymously in a plain white envelope that she could take back to the cloister. She was dressed in a turtleneck and a denim jumper. She could have been mistaken in a grocery store for an aging housewife. My meetings with her went on for a few years. I had come to speak about Durell. I did not know how to end sentences about Durell. He had taught me—what? To live? Not to wince in the mirror? What? There were so many ways to end my sentence. He was an unlikely candidate for so many things. Outside, it was always some subtle variation of summer. I paused, then spoke urgently, not wanting to forget some fact, but much I knew I would forget or remember in a way my own, which would not exactly be correct, no, not exactly. Durell was dead, I said, and I needed to make sense of things. Sister Ann’s face was open, fragile— parts were chipped like on a recovered fresco. Above her gray head, a garish postcard of the Emmaus scene, the colors off, as if painted by numbers, with no concern for shading— the style of it had an unoriginal Catholic institutional uniformity. There it hung, askew in its golden drugstore frame. It was the scene from the end of Luke, the two disciples, one named Cleopas, the other anonymous, forever mumbling Christ’s name, and with them, the resurrected Christ masquerading as a stranger. They were on their way to that town, Emmaus, seven miles out from Jerusalem, gossiping about the impress of Christ’s vanishing— they argued about whether to believe what they had seen; they were restless, back and forth the debate went— when there is estrangement there is little peace. ii

On Friday, at twilight of a summer day While the smells of food and prayer rose from every house And the sound of the Sabbath angels’ wings was in the air, While still a child I started to lie to my father: “I went to another synagogue.” I don’t know if he believed me or not But the taste of the lie was good and sweet on my tongue And in all the houses that night Hymns rose up along with lies To celebrate the Sabbath. And in all the houses that night Sabbath angels died like flies in a lamp, And lovers put mouth to mouth, Blew each other up until they floated upward, Or burst. And since then the lie has been good and sweet on my tongue And since then I always go to another synagogue. And my father returned the lie when he died: “I’ve gone to another life.”

I tell you it's a bitch existence some Sundays and it's no good pretending you don't have to pretend, don't have to hitch up those gluefutured nags Hope and Help and whip the sorry chariot of yourself toward whatever hell your heaven is on days like these. I tell you it takes some hunger heaven itself won't slake to be so twitchingly intent on the pretty organist's pedaling, so lizardly alert to the curvelessness of her choir robe. Here it comes, brothers and sisters, the confession of sins, hominy hominy, dipstick doxology, one more churchcurdled hymn we don't so much sing as haunt: grounded altos, gear-grinding tenors, two score and ten gently bewildered men lip-synching along. You're up, Pastor. Bring on the unthunder. Some trickle-piss tangent to reality. Some bit of the Gospel grueling out of you. I tell you sometimes mercy means nothing but release from this homiletic hologram, a little fleshstep sideways, as it were, setting passion on autopilot (as if it weren't!) to gaze out in peace at your peaceless parishioners: boozeglazes and facelifts, bad mortgages, bored marriages, a masonry of faces at once specific and generic, and here and there that rapt famished look that leaps from person to person, year to year, like a holy flu. All these little crevices into which you've crawled like a chubby plumber with useless tools: Here, have a verse for your wife's death. Here, have a death for your life's curse. I tell you some Sundays even the children's sermon — maybe especially this — sharks your gut like a bite of tin some beer-guzzling goat either drunkenly or mistakenly decides to sample. I know what you're thinking. Christ's in this. He'll get to it, the old cunner, somewhere somehow there's the miracle meat, the aurora borealis blood, every last atom compacted to a grave and the one thing that every man must lose to save. Well, friends, I'm here to tell you two things today. First, though this is not, for me, one of those bilious abrading days, though in fact I stand before you in a rage of faith and have all good hope that you will all go help untold souls back into their bodies, ease the annihilating No above which they float, the truth is our only savior is failure. Which brings me to the second thing: that goat. It was real. It is, as is usually the case, the displacement of agency that is the lie. It was long ago, Mexico, my demon days: It was a wager whose stakes I failed to appreciate. He tottered. He flowered. He writhed time to a fraught quiet, and kicked occasionally, and lay there twitching, watching me die.

1 Not sweet sixteen not even sweet sixteen and she’s moaning not even sixteen years old and she’s moaning not even sweet sixteen and she’s moaning the words moaning out the words to “Precious Lord” she says “ain’t no harm to moan” and she’s moaning it’s Aretha in the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit in 1956 words moaned out so that she becomes denuded no more little black dress she has nothing to hide no more little black dress she has nothing left to hide. Thomas Dorsey wrote the words wrote the words and the music Thomas Dorsey wrote the words and the music for “Precious Lord” Thomas Dorsey aka Georgia Tom wrote other songs one of the other songs “Deep Moaning Blues” Thomas Dorsey: “I like the long moaning groaning tone” Georgia Tom moaned “Deep Moaning Blues” with Ma Rainey Georgia Tom and Ma Rainey moan they moan and groan their moaning and groaning make you see moaning and groaning you’re made to see they have  nothing. 2 The first time Mahalia does it as one interconnected phrase she does it as three in one three words in one phrase three in one: “take-en-n—my-ah-aah—ha-an-nd” Mahalia does it in the same year in 1956 the same year as Aretha same but different the second time it is more aggressive it’s more aggressive: “take-ake my-ah han-and” Mahalia was a big fine woman Mahalia was denuded she sang “Precious Lord” at the funeral of Martin Luther King Aretha sang “Precious Lord” at the funeral of Mahalia. Thomas Dorsey met Mahalia met her for the first time in 1928 it was in 1928 that Georgia Tom moaned with Ma Rainey he moaned with Ma Rainey he moaned and he groaned with Ma Rainey he met Mahalia and he taught her how to moan “you teach them how to say their words in a moanful way” to say their words how to say his words Mahalia was a big fine woman Mahalia was denuded Dorsey knew the heavier the voice the better the singer Dorsey knew as any teacher knows the heavier the better. 3 Al Green has a softened voice he has a voice made softened he was made to sing softened by Willie Mitchell in 1972 softened and softened and softened Al Green became Rev. Al Green of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in 1980 a tabernacle is a fixed or movable habitation habitation where you stay together with the lord Al Green has a softened voice he has a voice made softened he was made to sing softened on “Let’s Stay Together” in 1982 he was made to sing softened on “Precious Lord.” Photograph of Thomas Dorsey photograph of a smooth operator photograph of Georgia Tom photo of a smooth operator the photo smoothed out retouched softened one side of the face completely light one side of the face all dark one side merges into the light smoothed out softened one side merges into the dark smoothed out made softened in the photograph a smooth operator is lighting a cigarette slender fingers hold a matchbox hold a match slender fingers hold a softened flame against the softened dark. 4 “Lead me” sing “lead me” they move with a repetitive rhythm Dom Mocquereau: “rhythm is the ordering of the movement” repetitive rhythm orders them to move on “lead” they move with all their weight on “lead” it sounds like “feed” it’s the Soul Stirrers it’s the most rhythmic music you ever heard repetitive rhythm it sounds like “feed me” S.R. Crain tenor A.L. Johnson baritone J.J. Farley bass Edmond Jabès: “can we be healed by repetition?” the Soul Stirrers move with a repetitive rhythm sing “feed me.” Thomas Dorsey came to Chicago came looking for deliverance Georgia Tom came in 1916 the Soul Stirrers in 1937 to get deliverance you have to wait on the movements of providence he played piano he sang at buffet flats at rent parties he was a smooth player and he sang softly a smooth player they called him “the whispering piano player” the most popular dance at the parties was the slow drag he learned how to drag easy how to sing softly how to drag easy how to wait on the movements of providence. 5 Soul Stirrers move with a repetitive rhythm sing “feed me” repetitive rhythm orders them to sing “feed me” R.H. Harris sings lead he sings the essential word R.H. Harris taught Sam Cooke and Sam Cooke taught Johnny Taylor Johnny Taylor “Who’s Making Love” 1968 R.H. Harris: “they got a touch of me even if they don’t know me” what they got a touch of touch of tongue love R.H. Harris taught them to study the essential word the word brings it to a picture it’s the lord making love. Thomas Dorsey wrote the words wrote the words and the music Thomas Dorsey wrote the words wrote the essential word wrote “precious” not “blessed” the essential word is “precious” this was to be enshrined as a moment of epiphany moment when he wrote the better-sounding word moment of épiphanie epiphania epiphano epiphaneia epiphanies moment of epiphany essential word shining picture Dorsey: “that thing like something hit me and went all over me” that thing must be that same thing went all over him. 6 Clara Ward’s real nasal her nasality makes her a real moaner she moans the three in one three words in one word she moans so that one word becomes three one becomes three: “thru-uuu-uah” double-clutches just like Aretha: “thru-ah thru-uuu-uah the night” sounds just like Aretha because Aretha sounds just like her Aretha followed Clara Ward note for moaning note denuded Aretha followed denuded Clara and did Aretha follow her to the lord to the lord to the light. Thomas Dorsey was invited to Philadelphia by Gertrude Ward Mrs. Gertrude Mae Murphy Ward the mother of Clara in 1931 Mrs. Ward was told in a vision was told to go and to sing Dorsey was invited to teach the Wards how to sing how to say his words in a moanful way Dorsey liked the long moaning groaning tone Mrs. Ward was told in a vision a vision from the lord Dorsey taught Clara and Clara taught Aretha how to say his words in a moanful way all through the night. 7 Sounds like “feed me” doesn’t sound like the Soul Stirrers it’s not the Soul Stirrers it’s the Kings of Harmony the Kings of Harmony with Carey Bradley on lead Carey Bradley was taught by Silas Steele the first hard lead Silas Steele sang lead for the Blue Jay Singers those singers recorded the first quartet version of a Dorsey song Silas Steele sang hard with a repetitive rhythm question is can we be healed by repetition over “feed me” Carey Bradley sings hard: “take-ah my hand.” Blue Jay Singers the first quartet to record a Dorsey song in 1931 those singers recorded “If You See My Saviour” those singers: “if you see my saviour tell him that you saw me” in 1931 Georgia Tom recorded “Please Mr. Blues” Georgia Tom recorded in 1931 with Tampa Red Georgia Tom and Tampa Red recorded a low moaning blues “Please Mr. Blues” is a deep low-down moaning blues those singers: “please be careful handle me like a child” if you saw their saviour you would see Mr. Blues. 8 Brother Joe May has a big voice has a big and loud voice Brother Joe May the thunderbolt of the Middle West the way he sang “pra-aaa-aaa-aaa-shus” is like thunder he was taught to sing “pra-aaa-aaa-aaa-shus” by Mother Smith he was taught to sing by Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith she was called Mother he called her Mother Mother Smith: “the lord just anoints me while I’m singing” when you’re anointed something goes all over you must be that same thng went all over her went all over her son. Mrs. Willie May introduced “If You See My Saviour” in 1930 this was before she was called Mother twenty years before Brother Joe May sang “pra-aaa-aaa-aaa-shus” in 1930 in Chicago at the National Baptist Convention during the morning devotions at the convention she sang “you saw me” during the morning devotions in 1930 in Chicago Georgia Tom recorded “She Can Love So Good” in 1931 in Chicago Georgia Tom recorded “Please Mr. Blues” if you saw her you’d see Mr. Blues loving her so good. 9 Way past sixteen way past sweet sixteen and she’s moaning she says “when I don’t feel like singing I moan” it’s Sister Rosetta Tharpe at The Hot Club de France in 1966 Sister Rosetta had dyed her hair red played a hollow-body jazz guitar Sister Rosetta has a resonating vibrato she moans “ho-oo-oo-oo-meh” with a resonating vibrato she moans out “ho-oo-oo-oo-meh” becomes resonant “when I don’t feel like singing I moan” she becomes completely resonant she has nothing left to hide. Thomas Dorsey wrote the words wrote the words and the music Thomas Dorsey wrote the words and the music for “Precious Lord” the song is an answer song to another song answer to George Nelson Allen’s “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?” George Nelson Allen thought the answer was no a cross for everyone “there’s a cross for everyone” Thomas Dorsey thought the answer was no “see you got to be susceptible for whatever comes in the ear” he got Sister Rosetta to be susceptible got everyone susceptible.

Of what sins have you made confession here, Ardent Cecile? Not passion’s intimacy, Or tangles of desire that mutineer A bold way through your maiden ecstasy. Those are not blamed...the penance not severe! Pray rather, with cool-lidded conscious eyes For warm juvescence of those ichored limbs, For laughter checked by no repentant cries, For lips unstained by pattering of hymns. Men’s glances have embraced you. They are wise. They have seen you, cumbent by the ruddy fire, Lending your curves to cushioned wantonness, Or leaping to the stroke of an earthy lyre Twanged in the joy of throbbing noon’s excess And cried no pause for love. You, they require. Of what sins have you made confession here, Ardent Cecile? The wood receives your knees; The organ stirs your prayer. Now you revere The God that made you beautiful among these, The gnarled and ugly. Your book receives no tear.