Poems for 3/27/23 - Two Poems from If I Were Going to Stay by Jeanne Guillemin

Two Poems from If I Were Going to Stay

 Jeanne Guillemin

Jeanne Guillemin was an eminent American anthropologist and, more important for me, the grandmother of one of my daughter's best friends (the entire family is important to us). I had the honor of officiating at Jeanne's funeral (a good story, by the way) and was invited to a recent gathering of family and friends to celebrate the publication of a volume of her poetry. No one besides Jeanne herself knew she wrote poetry, but among her final instructions to her family was to locate, organize, and publish the poems she wrote for herself between the early 70s and her death in 2019 (click here for her obituary)

At the gathering, we were each asked to choose a poem to read. The first poem here is the one I chose. Since there were poems in other registers, I chose a second one for this blog. If you're interested in seeing more, the book is available through the publisher. Amazon also has the book, with the Foreword, which explains the book's path to publication.

Broken in so many places

Life can be like that, suddenly

 in a quiet space, if you can find it, 

the fractures and fissures make themselves

known, having been silent, having held

their peace, as if you were intact, 

merely shaken, not broken.

An intrusion of music, maybe a rapturous aria, 

an adio by a doomed Butterfly or entombed Radames, 

voices that are logarithms of fatal pain

as it is being absorbed, and 

you feel every penetrating loss

that eluded the standard rituals, those crutches 

of banality handed out at funerals or after 

the shooting or car crash or the empty house, 

when our speechless hearts break and break.

Persuasion

When I call rejoice and rise up, 

you wild Isaiahs, will 

these isolated sensibilities

turn, culminate? I have 

cast off the anguish that 

tore, made me a red flower, 

the strength of my children's 

virtue renewed: I touch it 

and am saved. This living light is 

everywhere, on the salt-bitter 

sea, on the honey clover, in 

all journeys comes the radiance.

Are you willing?

Have you waited for the day?

Parthenia!

The hyacinthine egg is burst!

We are at last the colors of love 

and we shall sing together.

November 11, 1983