Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

To close out this week with its focus on family (the first time I've had a theme in quite a while), I decided to move from memories of lost relatives to a mother's gentle reproach to her son--reproach larded with not a little encouragement. Perhaps something like this is just what we need to hear from a mother (whether our own or Langston Hughes's) sometimes...

Mother to Son

Langston Hughes - 1902-1967

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

 

A Dream at Night - by Mei Yao Ch'en and The New Wife - by Wang Chien

 

Since I've been posting poems about family connections this week, it seemed to make sense to continue the theme with this short text of a man remembering his wife (since yesterday's poem was about a woman remembering her husband). If yesterday's poem was largely about the life the husband had before his second marriage to the poet, this poem is about the persistence in dreams of a couple's life together: the lovers' mutual connection, expressed through her care of his clothes and his desire to be reunited with her in death. The second poem today is also about marriage, but the beginning rather than the end. I found these poems in A Book of Luminous Things, the wonderful anthology of poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, that supplied the two poems from Monday's post. It was published in 1998, so I do not know if it's still in print, but it is a wonderful resource. A Dream at Night In broad daylight I dream I Am with her. At night I dream She is still at my side. She Carries her kit of colored Threads. I see her image bent Over her bag of silks. She Mends and alters my clothes and Worries for fear I might look Worn and ragged. Dead, she watches Over my life. Her constant Memory draws me towards death. -- Mei Yao Ch'en (1002-1060)

           translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth.

The New Wife
On the Third day she went down to the kitchen,
Washed her hands, prepared the broth.
Still unaware of her new mother’s likings.
She asks his sister to taste.
                                                -- Wang Chien (768-830)
        translated from the Chinese by J. P. Seaton

Second Wife - by Eve Triem - Poem for 10/26/21

 Second Wife

by Eve Triem - from New as a Wave: A Retrospective: 1937-1983

Slowly he accepts ice cream...

between the half-teaspoons

I feed him

he talks of Daisy,

grammar school idol;

repeats the story

of his first wife Minna.

He has used up more life

than I can imagine: at sixteen

goldmined in Alaska, killed a thief

trying for his poke.

Ranched in Leavenworth,

befriended Indians

against his neighbors;

sold strawberries

to the railroad women. Lectured

on mind-enchantment to movie starlets,

was paid top prices for mystery stories.

I listen to his tales, a Desdemona

pitying, unbelieving - not really enraged

at the waste of my youth.

I burn in the flame of his cremation.

Sorting my ashes from his I wonder

what will I remember at my end:

not the boys I danced with,

not even the delight of his mind.

Surely a tree in the alley

lighted by a finch singing louder

than the din of ash-cans.

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)

Supplication

The sea took a sailor to its deep. --

His mother, unsuspecting, goes to light

a tall candle before the Virgin Mary

for his speedy return and for fine weather--

and always she cocks her ear to windward.

But while she prays and implores,

the icon listens, solemn and sad, knowing well

that the son she expects will no longer return.

Translated from the Greek by Rae Dalven

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

From “Clearances," In Memoriam M.K.H. (1911-1984)

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Amores Perros - by Angela Narciso Torres - Poem for 10/21/21

I love this description of dog love--both the dog's love for his bone (or, in the case of my dogs, for any food, including bones or living rodents) and his love for his person. To call these forms of love erotic and platonic might be okay, but I think it makes too much of a distinction between them...

To hear a podcast about this poem, click here. 

Amores Perros

by Angela Narciso Torres

Sometimes I love you
the way my dog loves
his all-beef chew bone,
worrying the knuckled

corners from every angle,
mandibles working
like pistons. His eyes glaze
over with a faraway look

that says he won’t quit
till he reaches the soft
marrow. His paws prop
the bone upright,

it slips—he can’t clutch it
tight enough, bite hard
enough. A dog’s paws
weren’t meant for gripping.

And sometimes I love you
the way my dog brushes
his flank nonchalant
against my legs, then flops

on the floor beside me
while I read or watch TV.
His heft warms.
One of us is hungry,

the other needs
to pee. But we sit,
content as wildflowers.
Minutes pass. Hours.

How Prayer Words - Kaveh Akbar - Poem for 10/20/21

 

How Prayer Works

Kaveh Akbar

Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near
each other the edge of my prayer rug
covered the edge of his, my brother and I
prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19
and 12. He was back from college where
he built his own computer and girls kissed
him on the mouth. I was barely anything,
just wanted to be left alone to read and watch
The Simpsons.

We prayed together as we had done
thousands of times, rushing ablutions
over the sink, laying our janamazes out
toward the window facing the elm which
one summer held an actual crow’s nest
full of baby crows: fuzzy, black-beaked
fruit, they were miracles we did not think
to treasure.

My brother and I hurried through sloppy
postures of praise, quiet as the light
pooling around us. The room was so
small our twin bed took up nearly all of
it, and as my brother, tall and endless,
moved to kneel, his foot caught the coiled
brass doorstop, which issued forth a loud
brooong. The noise crashed around the
room like a long, wet bullet shredding
through porcelain.

My brother bit back a smirk and I tried

to stifle a snort but solemnity ignored our

pleas--we erupted, laughter quaking out our faces

into our bodies and through the floor. We were

hopeless, laughing at our laughing, our

glee an infinite rope fraying off in every direction.

It's not that we forgot God or the martyrs or the Prophet's holy word--quite the opposite, in fact, we were boys built to love what was right in front of our faces: my brother and I draped across each other, laughing tears into our prayer rugs.

Remember, Lillian, Stay Away From... - by Judith W. Steinbergh - Poem for 10/19/20

Thanks to Connie Rabinovitz for handing me Judith Steinbergh's book yesterday. Judith was Brookline Poet Laureate in the mid-twenty-teens. She inscribed this book to Connie in 1981. For some more recent poems, click here.

Remember, Lillian, Stay Away From

by Judith W. Steinbergh

from Lillian Bloom: A Separation (Green Harbor, MA: 1980)

Remember, Lillian, Stay Away From

married men

other writers

men you have to support

men with unfulfilled fantasies

men who hate kids

men who even mildly dislike them

men who like them too much

men who won't help cook

men who don't like what you cook

men who dislike women who want to succeed

men who like success better than women

men over 40

men under 40

men who lived with their mothers til 40

men who are like your mother

men your mother wouldn't like

men your mother would like

men who need you to understand their sexual difficulties

men who love sex as long as it's group

men who go with the flow

men who live in vans

men who are passing through on the way to Tibet
or Alaska or the Keys or even the suburbs

men who don't like your friends

men who are a bit too enthusiastic about your friends

men who were Jesuits for ten years

men who dress like Rita Hayworth

RocknRoll stars, flamenco dancers

taxi drivers

roofers without insurance

insurance salesmen with insurance

air force generals

philosophers

men who never smoked a joint

men who won't boogie

men with gurus they visit in India

men with gurus they visit in Brooklyn

men with analysts

analysts

therapists

state prison guards

men who have airplanes to catch

men with mistresses

men with computers in their bedroom

athletic fanatics

athletic supporters

men who believe in free will for men

amen

Wondrous - by Sarah Freligh - Poem for 10/18/21

 

I certainly remember reading Charlotte's Web to myself as a child, and I remember reading it to my children. I do not, however, remember my mother reading it to me--although it's quite possible that she did so. I also do not gravitate immediately to the scene of Charlotte's death. Rather, I'm drawn to the phrase, "No, I only distribute pigs to early risers." -- Look below the poem for the full context...

Wondrous

by Sarah Freligh

I’m driving home from school when the radio talk
turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit
the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,

travel back into the past, where my mother is reading
to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs
and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte

has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing
at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math,
how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief

multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried
seventeen times to record the words She died alone
without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during

which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying
for a spider he’d spun out of the silk thread of invention —
wondrous how those words would come back and make

him cry, and, yes, wondrous to hear my mother’s voice
ten years after the day she died — the catch, the rasp,
the gathering up before she could say to us, I’m OK.

---
From Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White

“Can I have a pig, too, Pop?’ asked Avery. ‘No, I only distribute pigs to early risers,’ said Mr. Arable. ‘Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one, to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.”

---

But as [Wilbur] was being shoved into the crate, he looked up at Charlotte and gave her a wink. She knew he was saying good-bye in the only way he could. And she knew her children were safe.

“Good-bye!” she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.

She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people what had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

The Same Inside - by Anna Swir - For 10/14/21

The Same Inside

by Anna Swir 

Walking to your place for a love feast
I saw at a street corner
an old beggar woman.

I took her hand,
kissed her delicate cheek,
we talked, she was
the same inside as I am,
from the same kind,
I sensed this instantly
as a dog knows by scent
another dog.

I gave her money.
I could not part from her.
After all, one needs
someone who is close.

And then I no longer knew

why I was walking to your place. 

Against Panic - by Molly Fisk - for 10/13/21

I found this poem in an anthology called How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. The editor is James Crews, but I picked it up because the foreword is by Ross Gay, who is an amazing poet in his own right. Ross Gay suggests that witnessing the world is a way of making the world, especially if we make poetry from that witnessing. This poem seems to me to do that.

By the way, I've linked to the poet's own blog, where the title of this poem is Against Panic and Pandemic. I'm not sure why she changed it for this anthology (or if the editor did it for her).

Against Panic

by Molly Fisk 

You recall those times, I know you do, when the sun  

lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,   

when a parched day finally broke open, real rain   

sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples   

and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards   

tipped over, falling, hope's last breath extinguished   

in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again —   

beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping. 

Blue and Green/Gold - Teasdale and Frost on Color - Poems for 10/12/21

I've been reading a book called Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different in Different Languages, by Guy Deutcher, which is about the balance of natural and cultural influences on language. The first half (which is as far as I've read so far) is about color, specifically the way human languages tend to develop color terminology is a predictable way, moving from black and white, then to red, then to green and/or yellow, and only lastly to blue. The primary thesis is that we humans come up with words for things we need to talk about. Since there is little in nature that is blue (besides the sky and sea, neither of which requires much discussion), it is generally one of the later words to develop in most languages. In any case, these two poems, which I found together in a high-school anthology of poetry, both concern color...

The Net

by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I made you many and many a song,

Yet never one told all you are --
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost (1874–1963)

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

If God Is a Virus - by Seema Yasmin - 10/11/21

 If God Is a Virus

by Seema Yasmin

from her book of the same name

She is vexed.

Absolutely done

with your shit.

God wants to know

why you didn't get a flu

shot; why her minions

made your left lung collapse

white out on the X-ray,

rack up a six-figure ICU

bill when all they wanted

was a warm vacation,

tropical waters, champagne

plasma to sip—not to bring

about death—not to turn

prunes in pleural fluid. No

body wants that. God thinks

anti-vaxxers have a death wish.

Wonders how they eat organic,

snort coke and laundry detergent

on weekends. Don't

they know yogi detox tea

is hepatotoxic? God knew

Charles Darwin. Clever

woman, she said. Who would

want your lot extinct?

In Maine - by Connie Rabinovitz - Poem for 10/6/21

 In Maine

by Connie Rabinovitz

A trio of birchs

guard cabin and lake

like sentinels.

Bare limbs punctuate the blue

while earth-bound roots are hidden.

Shadows form

horizontal grids

and stripe the caked snow.

These three mark our Land

as steadfast guides.

Who else before

tramped the ice?

searched the woods?

hunted the deer?

fished for sleeping pecrh?

as red-capped hopefels do now?

Who made a mark?

carved a boat?

sent a messape?

Hidden messages tease me.

To Autumn - John Keats - Poem for 10/6/21

To Autumn

John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.