hope is a thing with feathers

Cut Hair

 

Yesterday my friend cut

his 3 year long hair, trimmed

his beard too, and gave the pony

tail, wrapped civilly in a plastic bag,

to my boyfriend travelling stateside.

 

Being in Italy, he couldn’t mail

his precious cargo to the place in Texas

where they make wigs for kids

who have lost their ponies 

to cancer. I was astonished mostly

 

at the effort he had made, at how much

easier it would have been to sweep

it all into the waste bin. And at how

that thick rope of hair lying limp

on the kitchen table between us,

cut my stomach like the time

 

last month when I stood before

the room full of hair at Auschwitz.

 

It was sheathed in glass

the length and depth of this room.

Brown and blonde heaped together

but all graying, which scared me

especially—that there was still life

enough inside, needing to decay.

 

The people who once called this hair

their own, who brushed and plaited

it delicately before bed or fretted

over the clumps clogging the shower

drain, lost it to an evil more systematic

than the wobbling top of cancer.

 

This hair clung together like leaves

huddled after a storm, ripped

from their stems by a force unconvinced

of their future—hands so rough

compared to my generous friend’s,

 

who first gathered the strands

in a smooth knot, clipped

the thick cord at such an angle

as you would a long-stemmed rose:

intent on preservation, a gift

for someone lacking.

 

 

 

 

 

pretend it's yesterday

I meant to post this yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I am still trying to tweak the end, but probably won't come back to this one for a while.

(picture from nytimes.com)

click here to read about the festivities. 

Between the Wall

9 November 2009

 

It’s not the wall we’re afraid of.

The sharp scale, barbed wire wounds.

All this is accepted like the histories

we tell ourselves.  It’s the descent

 

into nothing, the desolate

middle, four or forty meters,

it doesn’t make much difference.

Each step groans

with bullets and bombs,

bodies that have stumbled.

 

Even those of great faith

(and there are few these days),

fear the walls of this Red Sea,

that they are escaping this cage

for a prison, that freedom is just

a myth we can’t stop telling.

 

Here we crouch like animals

in the shadows and cower

when the moth, which couldn’t

help but follow the light,

fries itself on the fence before us.

 

We keep meat in our pockets

to satisfy the dogs, knowing still

that only blood will suffice. 

kittaly

make sure you watch this youtube video first

she sells she cells

an irrelevant title as usual. Here's a poem.

ps. onepointfive days until levitaly.

yes.

Cells

On small days like today,

when gray is just another word

for waking, and the whole sky fits

inside this cup of tea,  which rattles

upon its saucer, weary as my bones;

on these days, I shake the softening

chalk and seal the thin walls

of my cells, sucking in

each watery breath until

I am a compact sun.

 

I draw inward, fetally,

and sigh easy within my handful

of sky, my brief cell block of life.  

always we begin again

it seems so long since I was in amsterdam. i need to get better at my handwriting if I expect my letters to be famous after my death like Van Gogh. on second thought, maybe I should work on doing something to be famous for first. 

My Only Ambition

 

My only ambition, like Van Gogh,                                       

is a few clods of earth, some sprouting wheat,

an olive grove. A liquid landscape

where light pulses like blood

and wind returns to its center.

 

Here I can unfurl my coat

from what it has been holding                               

inside all winter, and cartwheel

through the rows of wheat,

the orchard of trees.

 

Here is the darkness that quiets                                        

without closing, that like the mixed hues

of watercolor, is never entirely black,                                

but deepening shades of olive and emerald.

 

When the sun sets and colors

change, I will remain between

these rows and trees, planting

and painting what must follow

this damp thickening of night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the uncut hair of graves

Hello, here is a poem. Constructive comments are always helpful and welcome. Merci.

And here is a nice Monastery in France at sunset.

The Grass Does Not Ask

 

The grass needs no explanation.

It holds the dew until

 

the air does, weaves

and waves in the wind until

 

swallowed, starved, or trampled. 

It does not reflect

 

upon wilting with pity,

curling into itself to be

 

alone with misery.

It does not uproot itself,

 

willingly, in search of

something more. It needs

 

only the sky, and the sun’s

stark revelation. Surrounded

 

by the backs of every other,

a blade does not ask why. 

On War and Peace

“ Rostov couldn’t take his mind off the brilliant exploit which, to his astonishment, had won him the St. George’s Cross and a heroic reputation. There was something odd about it. ‘It turns out they’re even more scared that we are,’ he thought. ‘Is this it then? Is this what they mean by heroism? Did I really do it for my country? And what has he done wrong with his dimple and his blue eyes? He was so scared! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I want to kill him? My hand shook. And they’ve given me the George Cross! I can’t see it, I just can’t see it!’” (War and Peace, Vol. III Pt. 1 Chapter 16)

 

While walking to Pont du Hoc, the site of an infamously unnecessary (on account of the non-existent weapons “hiding” there) and bloody battle between a special US force and German soldiers, a student asked me what I thought about D-Day.  After a day spent in Museums and cemeteries I paused for a minute and chose my words carefully.

“I think that it is often portrayed in an overtly victorious, glorious light, without focusing on the deep human suffering that is occurring on all sides. There is no glory in war, there is only tragedy.” The student nodded, considering my thoughts and responded, “What about heroism, don’t you think there were heroic acts?” I paused again, thinking. “Well, I tend to stay away from the word heroism as I am not really sure what it means. It means something different to each person, and so I try to avoid such an ambiguous and loaded word. But I certainly believe there were individual acts of heroism, during which someone sacrificed his life for a comrade etc. But within the larger schema of the war, the senseless, territorial grab-bag of war, I do not think there is any glory in any of that. I simply see it as a tragedy that these acts of heroism were made necessary.”

Our discussion then veered off to the topic of pacifism, and I never had a chance to ask that student what he imagined when he thought of heroism in the chaotic context of war. Certainly, when I think of a heroic act, I cite a person without any agenda, sacrificing his or her life (if necessary), for another person. I won’t say an innocent person, because really, who is wholly innocent. So, I guess that is my definition. True heroism, does not have an agenda, is not an act of revenge, nor does is it an act violence. In a Christian context then I would cite Jesus as performing the ultimate heroic act in his crucifixion.

Later as we were leaving Colleville-Sur-Mer, the WWII US cemetery in Normandy , I noted these words inscribed upon the wall: “To these we owe the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live”.

What is this cause for which they died that I am called to carry on? I don’t think there is a simple, clean, universal answer, if an answer exists at all.