Omm: Robert Hass, his relationship with his brother, & the last two parts of August Notebook: A Death

3. 

You can fall a long way in sunlight. 
You can fall a long way in the rain. 

The ones who didn’t take the old white horse 
Took the morning train. 

When you go down into the city of the dead 
With its whitewashed walls and winding alleys 
And avenues of autumnal lindens and the heavy bells 
Tolling by the sea, crowds 
Appear from all directions, 
Having left their benches and tiered plazas, 
Laying aside their occupations of reverie 
And gossip and the memory of breathing— 
At least in the most reliable stories, 
Which are the ones the poets tell— 
To hear what scraps you can bring 
Of the news of this world where the air 
Is thin in the high altitudes and 
Of an almost perfect density in the valleys 
And shadows on summer afternoons sometimes 
Achieve a shade of violet that almost never 
Falls across pavements down there. Only the arborist 
In the park never comes for new arrivals. He is not incurious 
But he loves his work, pruning the trees, 
Giving them their graceful lift 
Toward light, and standing back 
To study their shapes, because it is he 
Who gets to decide 
Which limbs get lopped off 
In the kingdom of the dead. 

You can fall a long way in sunlight. 
You can fall a long way in the rain. 

The ones who don’t take the old white horse 
Take the evening train. 


4. 

Today his body is consigned to the flames 
And I begin to understand why people 
Would want to carry a body to the river’s edge 
And build a platform of wood and burn it 
In the wind and scatter the ashes in the river. 
As if to say, take him, fire, take him, air, 
And, river, take him. Downstream. Downstream. 
Watch the ashes disappear in the fast water 
or, in a small flaring of anger, turn away, walk back 
toward the markets and the hum of life, not quite 
saying to yourself There, the hell with it, it’s done.
I said to him once, when he’d gotten into some scrape 
Or other, “You know, you have the impulse control 
Of a ferret.” And he said, “Yeah? I don’t know 
What a ferret is, but I get greedy. I don’t mean to, 
But I get greedy.” An old grubber’s beard, going grey, 
A wheelchair, sweats, a street person’s baseball cap. 
“I’ve been thinking about Billie Holiday, you know 
if she were around now, she’d be nothing. You know 
what I mean? Hip-hop? Never. She had to be born 
at a time when they were writing the kind of songs 
and people were listening to the kind of songs 
she was great at singing.” And I would say, 
“You just got evicted from your apartment, 
you can’t walk, and you have no money, so 
I don’t want to talk to you about Billie Holiday 
Right now, OK.” And he would say, “You know, 
I’m like Mom. I mean, she really had a genius 
For denial, don’t you think? And the thing is. 
You know, she was a pretty happy person.” 
And I would say, “She was not a happy person. 
She was panicky and crippled by guilt at her drinking, 
Hollowed out by it, honeycombed with it, 
And she was evasive to herself about herself, 
And so she couldn’t actually connect with anybody, 
And her only defense was to be chronically cheerful.” 
And he would say, “Worse things than cheerful.” 
Well, I am through with those arguments, 
Except in my head, though I seem not to be through with the habit— 
I thought this poem would end downstream downstream— 
of worrying about where you are and how you’re doing.

Throwing Children by Ross Gay

 

It is really something when a kid who has a hard time becomes a kid who’s having a good time in no small part thanks to you throwing that kid in the air again and again on a mile long walk home from the Indian joint as her mom looks sideways at you like you don’t need to keep doing this because you’re pouring with sweat and breathing a little bit now you’re getting a good workout but because the kid laughs like a horse up there laughs like a kangaroo beating her wings against the light because she laughs like a happy little kid and when coming down and grabbing your forearm to brace herself for the time when you will drop her which you don’t and slides her hand into yours as she says for the fortieth time the fiftieth time inexhaustible her delight again again again and again and you say give me til the redbud tree or give me til the persimmon tree because she knows the trees and so quiet you almost can’t hear through her giggles she says ok til the next tree when she explodes howling yanking your arm from the socket again again all the wolves and mourning doves flying from her tiny throat and you throw her so high she lives up there in the tree for a minute she notices the ants organizing on the bark and a bumblebee carousing the little unripe persimmon in its beret she laughs and laughs as she hovers up there like a bumblebee like a hummingbird up there giggling in the light like a giddy little girl up there the world knows how to love.

(아빠 너무너무 보구싶어 ❤️)

First Lesson by Philip Booth

Lie back, daughter, let your head

be tipped back in the cup of my hand.

Gently, and I will hold you. Spread

your arms wide, lie out on the stream

and look high at the gulls. A dead-

man's-float is face down. You will dive

and swim soon enough where this tidewater

ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe

me, when you tire on the long thrash

to your island, lie up, and survive.

As you float now, where I held you

and let go, remember when fear

cramps your heart what I told you:

lie gently and wide to the light-year

stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you. 

A Slice of Actual Light by James Crews

And then one day, life placed

a slice of actual light on your plate

instead of the usual portion of grief

you thought would be your daily meal

for the rest of your time on earth.

You just turned and saw a patch

of sun sliding up and down

the wall beside the bed, last gasp

of daylight so inviting, how could you

not reach out and touch the heat

that slipped through a momentary

crack in the clouds? Now, believe

this will keep happening, these

glimmers gathering to overtake

the long shadow of sorrow for whole

minutes, even hours at a time.

Milkweed by James Wright

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

Thank-You Note

I owe so much

to those I don’t love.

The relief as I agree

that someone else needs them more.

The happiness that I’m not

the wolf to their sheep.

The peace I feel with them,

the freedom –

love can neither give

nor take that.

I don’t wait for them,

as in window-to-door-and-back.

Almost as patient

as a sundial,

I understand

what love can’t,

and forgive

as love never would.

From a rendezvous to a letter

is just a few days or weeks,

not an eternity.

Trips with them always go smoothly,

concerts are heard,

cathedrals visited,

scenery is seen.

And when seven hills and rivers

come between us,

the hills and rivers

can be found on any map.

They deserve the credit

if I live in three dimensions,

in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space

with a genuine, shifting horizon.

They themselves don’t realize

how much they hold in their empty hands.

“I don’t owe them a thing,”

would be love’s answer

to this open question.

Wisława Szymborska

“Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be……and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this:  

Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe.  

I will keep it safe.”