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