To Revolt Is To Insist On Joy
Today my steps are finally light,
and the pale afternoon is a little breath.
I love cauliflower with turmeric,
the taste of sweet olive oil,
the rubber trees, how we really belong
to all of this, how the universe is as old
as it is young, and what a thought.
I am sending you a long voice note
about how so much has changed.
Nothing I say will be new,
you’ve heard it all before and still, I think,
I know—you will listen. Anyways.
You can’t see the waves from here
but they remind me of that day,
the last time we stood close. What generous sun.
To have lived is to have seen,
and come to think of it, we haven’t seen much.
I call my mother, and my mother
calls my brothers, and my father
is such a good man. The gardenia
is sprouting after I’d given up on it.
The grass is shooting, like stars,
in too many directions at once.
Look, there. I am stopping to lay in this patch,
they haven’t stolen it—yet. Even tragedy
has a shape, can be uprooted. The sea is breaking,
again and again, like our flimsy hearts. Nothing dies.
Smell this yellow flower, so little, here.
The poems weren’t lying. It’s true.
It’s true it’s true it’s true
Nur Turkmani
*
The Layers
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Stanley Kunitz
*
Note #6:
LONGING
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
Czeslaw Milosz
