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Letter to a Young Poet

by Aharon Shabtai

The horror the dreadful disaster disgrace fractions of folly dumb religion obscurity of eyes violent despair won't repair, no officer no bomb, no airplane no more blood heart-wisdom alone will repair the physician alone will repair the surgeon, the good teacher the instructor alone will repair, the medic, Arab, Jew, will amend the calm traveller, the bike-rider the sandwich carrier crossing the street. The one who opens the eyes will amend The one who speaks in compassion Will heal, the listener will amend, The enlighted will amend, awaiting and pausing will amend, the guide in paths of generosity, of affection, will amend, the painter will amend, the poet will amend, disciples of peace will amend, the gardeners of peace.

by Larry Levis

by Jane Hirshfield

Take the used-up heart like a pebble and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left. Soon the last ripple exhausts itself in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery. Glaze them in oil before adding the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

by Reed Whittemore

by Nicholas Gulig

To see and fail to speak from far away of seeing, to go about a life, to write to friends and of them, to begin within their names, to wish them well and end in yours, sincerely, to drive to work in a green car singing, to have insurance, to listen to the radio, the county road in autumn, the light collected in the maples, in the birches, beautiful, to mouth the words of others, to believe them, to feel their language is your own, to own them momentarily, to feel ashamed of owning, to stare into the open windows of your house, to stand beside your wife, in the center of your yard, living, breathing, in the middle of October, the leaves around you, everywhere around you, to watch your daughter, to listen to her laughter fill you. From far away across the yard, it fills you. And then to know within the poem the noise that other people make when suffering. Enough to love them, to wish them well, you needed them imagined. You made them up, the people. What are people? And so it was you came to speak alone, a soul composed beyond the finite boundary of an ethics. Etched into an opening and closing space, the sound of “it” compressed with “it is not,” their echoing, your ache

by Adam Sol

It may be too late to complete

the vessel  that might save you

anyhow

set the saw to the wet wood or

are you saying

you will be one born in a flood time

who did  not strive to  build boats?

from Broken Dawn Blessings

by Kim Stafford

Some people presume to be hopeful when there is no evidence for hope, to be happy when there is no cause. Let me say now, I’m with them.

In deep darkness on a cold twig in a dangerous world, one first little fluff lets out a peep, a warble, a song—and in a little while, behold:

the first glimmer comes, then a glow filters through the misty trees, then the bold sun rises, then everyone starts bustling about.

by Jean Valentine

by Derek Walcott

by Humberto Ak'abal tr. by Michael Bazzett from K'iche' y Espagnol

Today I woke up outside of me and went out to find myself.

I travelled roads and paths until I found me

sitting on a mossy ledge at the foot of a cypress, chatting with the fog and trying to forget what I could not.

by George Elliott Clarke Wipe away tears, Set free your fears: Everything is free. Only the lonely Need much money: Everything is free. Don’t try to bind The love you find: Everyone is free. Your lover’s yours — Surrender force: Everyone is free. The sun melts down, Spreads gold around: Everything is free. The rain is spent Lending flowers scent: Everything is free. The love you live, The life you give: Everything is free.

“Everything is Free” from Whylah Falls. Copyright (c) 2001 George Elliot Clarke. Used by permission of Polestar Book Publishers. Polestar is an imprint of Raincoast Books.

Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie

What’s wrong? Titanic asked me this morning, when she found me lying on the ocean floor with all my suitcases strewn open.

Oh, I dunno, I moaned. I was looking through National Geographic and saw some pictures of you, and thought I might come have a chat. You looked great, by the way, in the pictures.

Me? No. Titanic smiled. If anything I seem to have become a Picasso. And I have a beard.

It was true; she looked more like a collage of a ship. Strangely two-dimensional, in a crater of her own making: French doors, boilers, railings every which way. And she did have a bit of a beard-rust icicles hanging in red strands from her iron engines.

Sitting up in my own little crater, I sort-of blushed.

To be honest, I told Titanic, My honey’s leaving town soon and I’m afraid it’s gonna wreck me, so I dove down here.

Well come on in, Titanic said, but I’m not sure I’ve got what you’re looking for.

So in I climbed, through a window between two rust stalactites, and began to pace her great promenade. (Which should have been awesome, by the way — walking by the ghosts of all those waving handkerchiefs — except that I was in that feeling-sorry-for-yourself state where every hallway is the hallway of your own wretched mind, every ghost your own ghost, so I didn’t take a good look around.)

When I got to the Turkish baths, I sat on the edge of a barnacled tub and watched weird crabs scrabble at my feet.

I was hoping you’d teach me how to sink, I said. You who have spent a century underwater with 1500 skeletons in your chest.

I don’t know, said Titanic, I’m kind of a wreck.

Exactly! I said, Me too! I’m here to apprentice myself to wreckage. I’m here to apprentice myself to you! Great bearded lady, gargantuan ark, you floating hotel. With enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone I’ve ever loved.

My heart has an iceberg with its name on it, I told Titanic, so I need your advice. Tell me, did you see the iceberg coming?

I did, Titanic said.

And you sailed right into it?

It was love, Titanic said.

And the band just kept playing? And the captain stayed at the wheel? What did it feel like to swallow seawater? Tell me, Titanic, how did it feel?

It felt like a hole in my side and then it felt like plummeting face first into the ice-cold ocean.

She’s a straight talker, the Titanic.

Alright, I said. Now let’s talk about rust. When my love leaves, I’m planning to weep stalactites from my chin. I will wear my sadness in long strands. Like you, I will be bearded by it.

Then I made a terrible noise.  Eeeeeeeeeeeerkkkkkkkkkk! I’ve been practicing the sound of wrenching metal, I told her, from when my love leaves.

But you aren’t made of metal. Titanic said to me.

I’m a writer, I said, I can be made of anything.

Well then, be a writer. She said.

Be a writer? I paused, anemones between my toes. Okay. When my love leaves. I will start with SOS. I will Morse code odes as the whole world goes vertical. I will write nosedives as my torso splits in two.

And the next day I will write the stunned headlines, and the next day I will write the obituaries, and the next day I will write furious accusations, and the next day I will write lawsuits, and the next day I will write confessions of wrongdoing, and the next day I will write pardons, but I won’t really mean it, and the next day I will write sonnets, but they won’t fit the schema, and the next day I will write pleas, please, please come back. The next day I will write epitaphs, navigation maps, warnings for future generations about the hubris of human love. I will write quotas and queries and quizzes, I will write nonsense, I will write nonsense, I will write nonsense all the way down and no diving teams will find me, no robot arms will retrieve me in pieces, never will I be reassembled in plain air. No, I will remain whole, two miles down, with my suitcases strewn open, and in 100 years I will still be writing about this feeling, though my heart be a Picasso, though my heart be bearded at the bottom of the sea.

The Titanic let me cry for a while, my sobs echoing off her moldy mosaics.

Then she said: Girl, you’re too young for a beard like this. You’re never gonna get some if you rust over now.

I sniffled a little and scratched my name into the green slime of the tub.

The trouble with you humans is that you are so concerned with staying afloat. Go ahead, be gouged open by love. Gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves. You’re not a boat, you can go under and come up again, with those big old lungs of yours, those hard kicking legs.

And your heart, she said, that gargantuan ark, that floating hotel. Call it Unsinkable, though it is sinkable. Embark, embark.

There are enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone you’ll ever love.

That’s what the Titanic told me this morning, me, lying next to her on the ocean floor.

Aracelis Girmay

I would not call it fear or the absence of fear that I woke with, but worry, this morning when I rose up from the bed, & saw, with clear seeing, for the first time, that my chest was a small, red cup, or bird in my hand, somehow thirsty, its injury made me panic for it & I carried it with me not knowing what to do with its small speech, the way it said your name.

I want to know what to do with the dead things we carry.

If I were to wake another morning, maybe tomorrow, with the red thing in my chest or hand, what would I do? Will I?

& the bird, would it attempt, to cross over, would it come again from the body's realm of animals & claws? Would it risk its life again to give me the message of your name? Would I trust my mouth to resuscitate the messenger, small bird, knowing I could kill it with my teeth?

by eve l. ewing

I mean I'm here to eat up all the ocean you thought was yours. I mean I brought my own quarter of a lemon, tart and full of seeds. I mean I'm a tart. I'm a bad seed. I'm a red-handled thing and if you move your eyes from me I'll cut the tender place where your fingers meet. I mean I never met a dish of horseradish I didn't like. I mean you're a twisted and ugly root and I'm the pungent, stinging firmness inside. I mean I look so good in this hat with a feather and I'm a feather and I'm the heaviest featherweight you know. I mean you can't spell anything I talk about with that sorry alphabet you have left over from yesterday. I mean when I see something dull and uneven, barnacled and ruined, I know how to get to its iridescent everything. I mean I eat them alive. what I mean is I'll eat you alive, slipping the blade in sideways, cutting nothing because the space was always there.

--- -

"No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife." –Zora Neale Hurston

after Nazim Hikmet, for & after Rassan

At the Detroit Metro Airport with the turtle-hours to spare between now & my flight, there is such a thing as the kindness of the conveyor belt who lends me its slow, strange mollusk foot as I stand quiet, exhausted, having been alone in my bed for days now, sleeping in hotels, having spent months, now, without seeing the faces of my family, somehow its slow & quiet carrying of the load reminds me of the kindness of donkeys & this kindness returns me to myself. It reminds me of the kindness of other things I love like the kindness of sisters who send mail, wherever you are, &, speaking of mail, there is the special kindness of the mail lady who says, "Hi, baby" to everyone, at first I thought it was just me, but now I know she says "Hi, baby" to everyone. That is kindness. Too, there is the kindness of windows, & of dogs. & then there was that extraordinary Sunday back at the house, I heard a woman screaming about how she was lonely & so lonely she didn’t know what she’d do, maybe kill herself, she said, over & over like a parrot in a cage, a parrot whose human parent only taught it that one sentence. I looked out the window & saw her from behind, the way she flung her arms like she was desperate & being killed or eaten by an invisible predator, like a tiger or a lion, in the chest. & her voice seemed fogged out with methadone, I don’t know, something, & I walked away from the window & sat, angry with her for screaming, & sad, & not long after, I heard her saying, What’d you say? What’d you say to me? & a man’s voice, low, I could not tell if it was kind. & she said, I’ll kill myself, I’m so lonely. & did I tell you, yet, that it was Mother’s Day? Flowers & mothers, flowers & mothers all day long. & the woman saying, I’m so lonely. I could kill myself. & then quiet. & the man’s voice saying, It’s okay. It’s okay. I love you, it’s okay.

& this made me get up, put my face, again, to the window to see my landlord’s nephew outside, just hugging her so, as if it were his mother, I mean, as if he belonged to her, & then, again, quiet, I left the window but sat in the silence of the house, hidden by shutters, & was amazed. When the front door of the brownstone opened up & let the tall nephew in with his sad & cougar eyes, handsome & tall in his Carolina-Brooklyn swagger, I heard him start to climb the stairs above me, & my own hand opened up my own front door, & though it was none of my business I asked him, Do you know that women out there? & do you know what happened next? He said, No. The nephew said no, he didn’t know the woman out there. & he told me Happy Mother’s Day as he climbed the rest of the stairs. & I can’t stop seeing them hugging on the street, under trees, it was spring, but cold, & sometimes in the memory his head is touching hers & sometimes in the memory his eyes are closed, & sometimes she is holding him & singing to him I love you. It’s okay. I mean to tell you that everywhere I go I hear us singing to each other. This way. I mean to tell you that I have witnessed such great kindness as this, in this, my true life, you must believe me. I mean, on a Sunday, when nobody was supposed to be watching. Nobody at all. I saw this happen, the two of them hugging, when nobody was supposed to be watching, but not a secret either, public as the street, not for glory & not for a joke, the landlord’s nephew ready to stand there for the woman like a brother or a sister or a husband or son, or none of these at all, but a stranger, a stranger, who like her, is an earthling. Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth & the common circumstance of being here: what remains living of the last two million, impossible years…

the desi girl got lost in london. won’t someone find her and take her home? this brown girl got lost in london. somewhere between Whitehall and White City and the White House and Whitechapel. desi tourist in trafalgar square how scandalous you look. no not hindustani. pakistani now. hindustani-indian-pakistani-desi-brown-girl posing next to the statue of general sir charles napier commander in chief for india. he gleams cold and hard bronze. you and him for the camera. smiling. don’t be absurd. run along go home. or put your ear against him. can you hear him? he’s been talking about you. he says you were too rebellious. how difficult you made things for him. The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed. he said that about you. are you wild? or tame now? are you going to make it easy for him? do you need a good thrashing? after you’ve gone red and sore and the cuts and welts sear across your skin, you can have some peanut brittle. you look scared. i only mean to warn you. slowly walk away desi girl. did you think london was a playground or some great grand city of enchanting culture and history? slave traders shook hands at this corner. pose take a photo. here be glorified war crimes. watch out: here a paki was punched to a pulp. samosas, chicken tikka masala, and the blood of your ancestors by the pound. did you think you could go to the museums and not cry but they stole this from me. the kohi noor. that’s mine. with your hands against the protective glass put there because stealing is illegal in this country. go home desi girl.