Old Marx (2)

Old Marx (2)
by Adam Zagajewski

I try to envision his last winter.
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thame's black water,
chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?

He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world
just a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his lids.

From Eternal Enemies (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008).

Singsong

Singsong
by Rita Dove

When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles
and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy
waiting for my owner to pick me up.

When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.
There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.

I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,
tongued in honey and coddled in milk,
sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt.

And the world was already old.
And I was older than I am today.

Yogic Poems as Poses for Inspiration: a review of Li-Young Lee's visit to Georgetown

Listening to Li-Young Lee read, I felt privy to secrets: he revealed that he wanted to sing, but doesn’t know any songs, that people have been trying to kill him since he was born, that he and his sister died in childhood. Sound ricocheted back and forth between poems. The staccato repetition of “playing” in “After the Pier” and the complementary pairing of “principle” and “potential” in “A Voice’s Gaze” echo familiar “p” sounds, which are reinforced by the repetition of the word “presence” in his poems and the condition of being “present” he insist upon in his work.

I entered our seminar with Li-Young Lee unfamiliar with his work beyond the selected poems we had been given and an abridged understanding of his biography. His words on the page did not move me, and it took some time listening to him speak about his life and work before I grew enchanted under his spell. My captivation connected with him once he began talking about speech as an act that was both life sustaining and life sapping. He proposed, as one speaks, one contributes meaning to life; but as one speaks he or she has less breath and thus less life. He defined a poem as “a musical score for our dying breath”, which I internalized as the most complete poem of brevity I had ever heard.

This turn in our seminar’s focus drew me into Li-Young Lee’s spiritual and philosophical approach to language. He seemed to feel language in a way I crave and emphasized the importance of connection (spiritual, emotional, psychological) only achieved through language. A poem provides an access point to resurrect the aroma of a flower that has lost its scent. He spoke of his reliance on the practice of yoga, and the desire to write yogic poems that feel connected to the present.

I was originally uncertain as to how the words of Li-Young Lee could be yogic for me. It seemed hokey to compare and conflate the poses and positions of yoga with the performance of a poem, but once I heard him read, the connection was instantaneous. I heard his words, and connected with them deeply. I identified the good in falling asleep in a favorite chair with a book I enjoy, but also know spooning is even better. While I lingered on every word, his words inspired creativity in me I had not felt in months. Every verse he completed, I wanted to write. My journal is filled with dozens of first lines inspired not necessarily by the content of Li-Young Lee’s poems, but rather by the dedication and presence with which he shared them.

To extend Lee’s own metaphor of yoga, it was though every poem he read challenged me to reach inside myself to master a new pose. Sometimes having a master set the example provides a reference and a motivation to excel in your own pose. The beauty of yoga is you are only working for yourself, but you benefit from the energy of the bodies striving to achieve presence around you. The sounds of Lee’s poems, inspired me to look inside myself, and the concentration of everyone in the room on the lingual offerings created a buzz of excitement and creativity that suggested to me perhaps Lee’s analysis of breath and speech as strictly life sustaining/life sapping is overly simplistic. It seems his poetry and breath have a property of transferal to inspire the affirmation of life in others.

Explosive Imagination

Explosive Imagination
by Julia Lovett

Home life changed after the explosion.
Mommy got sick from the nuclear fallout.
Chizuko and I were jumping rope when the explosion
billowed into a mushroom cloud of nuclear explosion.
It looked beautiful – a mosaic celestial imagination,
but sirens soon screamed after the explosion.
Recess ended abruptly in wake of the explosion.
Daddy never came to pick me up. I waited alone.
All our lives shattered with that bomb alone.
Abstract justifications for the explosion
mean nothing to an island of orphans.
Our shelters explode with an abundance of orphans.

My family agreed to house some orphans –
our cousins’ parents died in the explosion.
In spite of their misfortune, they are lucky orphans
to have a warm home and family unlike most orphans.
Life appeared almost normal until the fallout
heightened and the hospitals filled until the orphans
became corpses and parents left more orphans.
Funerals grew perfunctory. I started to imagine
lilies dancing to the hymns sung at my own imaginary
funeral. I saw my anticipated future children as orphans
huddled together in the front row alone.
My hollow feelings resonate now that I’m alone.

Chizuko left school, so I jumped rope alone.
She wasn’t the first; kids trickled away. Orphans
retired to crammed orphanages studying alone.
Sharing bedrooms and bathrooms, never alone,
but always lonely, absent their family lost in the explosion.
One afternoon I fell down on the walk home alone.
I spent long, dizzy nights cooped up in my room alone.
Too scared to share, my sickness was my secret. Fallout
killed people quickly; too much time passed for fallout
to punish me with the A-bomb disease. I waited alone
expecting the worst while perpetually imagining
a world with a cure. Reality burst my imagination.

Japanese legend coupled with a vivid imagination
convinced me folding a thousand paper cranes alone
would appease the Gods enough for me to imagine
a cure to my condition. Despite my affected imagination
Mom knew I was sick. The doctor for orphans
at the Red Cross’ center tried to stifle my imagination
using big words and grave terms. Imagining
her daughter’s imminent death Mom cried explosively.
Fleeting moments until I joined the other explosion
victims buried in the ground – a mother’s worst imagination.
Body bags stayed full for years from the fallout.
Empty homes of fractured families all fall out.

I died after months of misery and the fallout
of my death captured the immensity of my imagination.
Sitting in funerals I always imagined a fallout
of lilies lacing my casket. The fallout
was folded like a lily’s soft petals, but origami alone
remembered my death. A thousand small cranes fell out
from their cage hoping to soar to a fallout
of peace. One of many deaths of an island of orphans,
nothing had to change – parents still died leaving orphans,
tragic memories still haunt an island, but the fallout
shifted from tragedy to inspiration: an explosion
optimistic for peace, a positive explosion.

An island of victims of a violent explosion
united to reappropriate tragedy toward peaceful fallout.
Fulfilling the Earthly dreams of my imagination
achieving more than I ever could alone –
an indestructible explosion of peace assembled by orphans.