Tag / Poetry
Ways to Walk Through Life
The Year of the Child
By Robert Hayden for his grandson
And you have come,
Michael Ahman, to share
your life with us.
We have given you
an archangel’s name–
and a great poet’s;
we honor too
Abyssinian Ahman,
hero of peace.
May these names
be talismans;
may they protect
you, as we cannot, in a world that is
no place for a child–
that had no shelter
for the children in Guyana
slain by hands
they trusted; no succor
for the Biafran
child with swollen belly
and empty begging-bowl;
no refuge for the child
of the Warsaw ghetto.
What we yearned
but were powerless to do
for them, oh we
will dare, Michael, for you,
knowing our need
of unearned increments
of grace.
I look into your brilliant eyes, whose gaze
renews, transforms
each common thing, and hope
that inner vision
will intensify
their seeing. I am
content meanwhile to have
you glance at me
sometimes, as though, if you
could talk, you’d let
us in on a subtle joke.
May Huck and Jim
attend you. May you walk
with beauty before you,
beauty behind you, all around you, and
The Most Great Beauty keep
you His concern.
Your Celestial Potential
“Ways to Walk Through Life…”
Train Ride
All things come to an end;
small calves in Arkansas,
the bend of the muddy river.
Do all things come to an end?
No, they go on forever.
They go on forever, the swamp,
the vine-choked cypress, the oaks
rattling last year’s leaves,
the thump of the rails, the kite,
the still white stilted heron.
All things come to an end.
The red clay bank, the spread hawk,
the bodies riding this train,
the stalled truck, pale sunlight, the talk;
the talk goes on forever,
the wide dry field of geese,
a man stopped near his porch
to watch. Release, release;
between cold death and a fever,
send what you will, I will listen.
All things come to an end.
No, they go on forever.
Grant me the patience to notice grace in every ending and may strength be there too. Amen.
“Fierce People”
When asked about how she talks to her sons, navigates with them, on topics such as being black in the violent world, Poet Elizabeth Alexander said this:
That the life force we have as a culture that has survived against all odds is extraordinary and beautiful. That is why I teach African-American studies. And my babies—two tall young men, walking around in these tall bodies, made vulnerable by their skin color, that is a parent’s nightmare. You teach children to be safe and smart in the street. But you need to teach them to stand up straight in themselves in their gorgeous, mighty culture. That they are fierce people from fierce people. The worst damage racism can do to our children is to raise them up to be fearful.
There’s much to learn in these words.
Read her full interview in “On the Healing Power of Words” on the Root here.
“Grief” by Stephen Dobyns
Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere
people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor’s floor.
I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.
(Posted in remembrance of our father, Mardell Culley, Sr. on the second anniversary of his death)
The Race
Posted for all those relatives–past and present–who do everything to share those last moments with their lovely ones.
The Race by Sharon Olds
When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you’ll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he’d told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
Goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle’s eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people’s hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.
Among Many Tasks
The fall will bring a slightly different schedule for me. The whole thing holds together and will open me to new ways of deepening my vocation and the little works which make up my vocation. I’ll be doing a lot, and I’m looking forward to it.
Perhaps it seems inappropriate to hold this poem on this blog, but it seems a striking reminder for me as a parent. In the end, as I see it and believe it and imagine it, all our small works turn to one task of continued self-surrender, continued dying.
That dying sits at the bottom of my faith, though that bottom would quickly, almost too effortlessly, be named as living. That eternal life only comes after one has regularly and daily passed through the gates of death. Life comes from death, says the One we follow. May this poet’s words be a reminder of these things to me:
Among Many Tasks
Among many tasks
very urgent
I’ve forgotten that
it’s also necessary
to be dying
frivolous
I have neglected this obligation
or have been fulfilling it
superficially
beginning tomorrow
everything will change
I will start dying assiduously
wisely optimistically
without wasting time
Tadeusz Rozewicz (From The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry)
The Year of the Child
And you have come,
Michael Ahman, to share
your life with us.
We have given you
an archangel’s name–
and a great poet’s;
we honor too
Abyssinian Ahman,
hero of peace.
May these names
be talismans;
may they protect
you, as we cannot, in a world that is
no place for a child–
that had no shelter
for the children in Guyana
slain by hands
they trusted; no succor
for the Biafran
child with swollen belly
and empty begging-bowl;
no refuge for the child
of the Warsaw ghetto.
What we yearned
but were powerless to do
for them, oh we
will dare, Michael, for you,
knowing our need
of unearned increments
of grace.
I look into your brilliant eyes, whose gaze
renews, transforms
each common thing, and hope
that inner vision
will intensify
their seeing. I am
content meanwhile to have
you glance at me
sometimes, as though, if you
could talk, you’d let
us in on a subtle joke.
May Huck and Jim
attend you. May you walk
with beauty before you,
beauty behind you, all around you, and
The Most Great Beauty keep
you His concern.
By Robert Hayden (For his Grandson)
Michael Washington 