New England white church white
meeting house on green commons

where slaves could not stroll at night
in Boston carry sticks or canes

where African slaves were first bought
with Pequots captured in Just warre

where slaves were sometimes sold in taverns

where churches bought them for ministers

where ministers lawyers doctors farmers
used them for cutting carting hoeing
husking mowing ferrying carrying

and where in any case the slave trade . . .

where the last slave died in 1859 in Rhode Island

oh New England your white meeting broken oh

#7 and #31 from White Papers, by Martha Collins  c 2012.  All rights are controlled by The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA  15260.  Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

coming home to front
door closing back to back
to roost pigeons whitened

doves among white
blossoms trees limbs
swaying eyes gleaming

teeth bones remaining
dangling fleshless white
bodies underneath after all

#7 and #31 from White Papers, by Martha Collins  c 2012.  All rights are controlled by The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA  15260.  Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

I. Evening

Leisurely, the evening sky puts on the robe

held up for it by a crown of ancient trees;

you watch, and the realms move apart like lovers—

one travels heavenwards, and the other one falls

and lets you be, bound to neither universe,

nor quite so dark as the house with its silence,

nor wholly so certain as eternity implored,

like whatever it is that becomes a star and rises—

and lets you be (to unravel beyond language)

your life, with its fear and infinity burgeoning,

so that, now walled in, now encompassing all,

it pulsates in you—stone, star, wave, particle.

II. All Souls

Gentlemen, ladies—a scrum of grieving friends—

sow their flowers now, the blue and the red,

on graves where the dusk sun lowers its curtain.

Poor, helpless puppets, they rehearse before death.

How rife with fear they look, how beaten to dust

standing here, shadows behind darkened shrubs.

Cries of the unborn keen in the autumn gusts

and someone watches lights in crazy reelings flitter.

The moans of lovers are breathing in the branches,

and with them rot bodies of a mother and child.

How unreal the roundabout of the living’s dance

and how strangely mingled with the evening wind.

Their lives are so plagued, brokenhearted, lacerated.

Have mercy, God, on women’s torments and despair,

and on these requiems, so hopeless and desolate.

Hushed, the lonely wander through vaulting halls of stars.

III. The Way

Greatness—you wanted it, too, but love hurls

everything down, grief grovels us till we’re tame,

though not for nothing are all of us bowed

back to the fetal cringe from which we came.

Go any which way. Somewhere in sacred night

dumb nature schemes our hatching brood of days;

just so, bent from hell’s own cowering heights,

is there nothing straight, nothing not astray?

I’ve suffered enough to know this—to my knowledge

never have the heavenly, the upholders of all,

never have they guided me like mortal masters

with care and caution along a level path.

Human, assay everything, so bespeak the Heavens,

so that fed on the living core you will learn

to give thanks to all that is, and grasp the freedom

to go where you will, having torn your self asunder.

IV. The Seeker

Like beings that exist in distant nebulae

we pass, revenants, from dream to dream,

we descend right through the blinding walls

of light bending through its seven-fold prism—

but invisible as glass, at last, and wordless,

the quantum singularity of death

held up in eternity’s crystal chalice,

and night’s wing beats laid bare, with every mystery.

All I saw was how fire had eaten the honey
of his flesh.

Up one leg and into a shoulder,
most of a cheek.

And yet he stood, cradled
the rack, eyes

wet, blistered with shock,
as the cage closed

and the cables snickered in.
I thought Michelangelo’s

Christ,
cool stone

(orderly at his elbow,
me carrying vials of blood

STAT
to C-Lab).

That seven story lift—last shaft of peacefulness
before the searing

sheeted in
and they’d peel

away his clothes, that fine webbing
of synthetic

and arm.
What howls rose then

beyond the heavy swinging doors
of the Burn Ward?

I walked by for weeks,
tried to see

the debridement,
the reverse burning,

water for
fire—the grafting—

the man partially lizard in that clean room.
The nurses’ bodies

through the Demerol
like raw angels

dabbing his burning half with a cotton ball
soaked in silver

until
he was chromed and barred.

A kind of xylophone whose primary song
was pain.

Cool stoke of the hammer:
new flesh (howl),

dream of wife’s body, island
he could sink his whole mouth onto,

healed (howl), risen
(howl again)—

time like an anvil—
somebody’s face (mine often)

pressed one side of a page-sized window
scratched by breath and hand.

When it comes time for the mourners
To say a few words about you
Will your lives stand up one by one
And reveal secrets that will leave others aghast
Thinking they never really knew who you were

Will they recite a litany of all your wrongs
Beginning in childhood and continuing far too long
The angry words the hurtful acts the shameful deeds
Will they accuse and blame and indict you
As you have done yourself so many 3 A.M.s?

Or will they instead celebrate how ardently you loved
How fiercely you stood your ground how artfully
You fashioned victories from defeat’s tangled debris
And when your coffin passes by give you a wink and a thumbs-up
Then join the procession out the door and vanish into the rain

Three Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

from the series Quatrains Valaisans [Valaisian Quatrains]

translated from the French by Susanne Petermann

30

Au lieu de s’évader,

ce pays consent à lui-même;

ainsi il est doux et extrême,

menacé et sauvé.

Il s’adonne avec ferveur

à ce ciel qui l’inspire;

il excite son vent et attire

par lui la plus neuve primeur

de cette inédite

lumière d’outre-mont:

l’horizon qui hésite

lui arrive par bonds.

30

Rather than escaping,

this land accepts itself;

thus it is gentle and harsh,

vulnerable and saved.

Fervently it gives itself

to its inspiration, the sky;

it arouses the wind, attracting

the newest and freshest

of that unedited light

from beyond the mountains:

the reluctant horizon

approaches, leaping.

33

Ce ciel qu’avaient contemplé

ceux qui le loueront

pendant l’éternité:

bergers et vignerons,

serait-il par leurs yeux

devenu permanent,

ce beau ciel et son vent,

son vent bleu?

Et son calme après,

si profond et si fort,

comme un dieu satisfait

qui s’endort.

33

Could it be that shepherds

and growers of wine,

contemplating the sky

and praising it eternally,

make it more permanent

with their eyes,

this fair sky and its wind,

its blue wind?

And its calm afterward,

so heavy and so deep,

like a satisfied god

falling asleep.

35

Au ciel, plein d’attention,

ici la terre raconte;

son souvenir la surmonte

dans ces nobles monts.

Parfois elle paraît attendrie

qu’on l’écoute si bien—

alors elle montre sa vie

et ne dit plus rien.

35

In this place the earth tells her story

to a sky full of attention;

the strength of her memory shapes her

into these noble mountains.

Sometimes she seems moved

that we listen so well—

when we do, she reveals her life

and then says nothing else.

37: CIEL VALAISAN

Comment notre coeur lorsqu’il vibre

a-t-il tant besoin

que tout un ciel de loin

lui donne des conseils d’équilibre.

Mais ce ciel depuis toujours

a de nos cris l’habitude;

ami de la terre rude,

il en adoucit le contour.

37: VALAISIAN SKY

When our heart is aroused

it is full of desire

to be shown what is balance

by the whole broad sky.

But the sky has known

our sorrows forever;

friend of the rugged earth,

smoothing out her contours.

Sunlight filters through loose clouds
Above this colonial city on a hill

Where bougainvillea spreads over red-clay roofs
And the smell of fresh baked bread fills the air

Taxco, you are so much more than silver jewelry

You are the pink cantera Christ standing with open arms
The cantaloupe and spiny chayote laid out on bed sheets
Throughout the city
The bright red yarn braided into long brown hair

The artist painting intricate scenes with a single fingernail
The clay pots bursting with flowers on every balcony
The old woman walking to the market
Slow and steady

You are the boy pulling a burro to Santa Prisca Cathedral
The orange and yellow flowers left as offerings

even as, like Jack, we continue to descend,
Fee Fi Fo Fum at our back. Our eyes strange

with seeing because the ball is still in the air.
No, it’s in our hands which is why we slip out

into the earth’s big forest taking the shortcut
that will bring us to our abandoned childhoods

where boulders are crocheted with lichen
and language ricochets off our tongue

and once again we believe we have dodged the bullet
not realizing the bullet has made other plans.

it is either subjective or objective — Basho

So listen.

You have to change.

You have to stop being yourself.

Don’t use your own voice, lose it.

Forget your likes, dislikes, how sinful you are,

salvation, damnation, heaven and hell.

Forget your cravings.

Stop looking for Ms. Right or Mr. Right,

your guardian angel, your Muse … even God.

Get yourself completely out of the picture.

And stop thinking about reincarnation,

wars, global warming, other planets, galaxies,

the expanding universe, alien invasions,

total devastation — all that objective nonsense.

Face it! You have to become so pure

you won’t see anything when you look in a mirror,

so pure you won’t hear your own breath,

won’t feel your own heartbeat, the rush of joy,

the pangs of sorrow.

You have to make sure there’s nothing left,

then write about that!