Poets’ Cento

I

At the end of a clear blue day, entwined
honeysuckle & jasmine stamens lust
for tasting, the hour loneliness lay open to the sky.
You came to the garden—a breeze through rushes,
syllables from the sea where falling pine needles fashioned
a bed of wild broom, fennel & thyme. Listening
to bees drunk on hyssop, I lay dawn upon your lips,
our hearts a saffron, which is when the sun rose
in your womb. Why did the linden bird sing
such a sad lonely song that day?

II

In somnolent March light your time came.
I laid my ear upon your nakedness—
listening to the sea—wave on wave,
whispering mysteries.
Writhing like a body burned alive, you cried,

O God!

I wept, Woman, woman, I love you,

When our son was born
under a troubled moon,
born with a closed fist,
wrapped in a bloody caul
in the clamour of war.

III

I think of you,
my husband,
in uniform
& your rifle,
a haunted Catholic face,
pallid & brave, ghosting
trenches like a bloom of hawthorn.
Are you alive?
Or underground?

IV

Dear wife,
this winter wounded were stretched
across fields, blood raining
upward toward the sky,
sounding like flailing birds
who don’t know why their wings fail.
A soldier asked, Who’s sorry for our trouble?
When I saw a dead child abandoned,
a boy holding a toy, in my delirium I kissed
his empty shoes. In a dream I crawled
back into the belly of my mother
as if into a bomb shelter to be born
again & like pearls from a torn
necklace I trembled, which
is when I was put
to death.

V

I woke to our son weeping
in his sleep, begging,
Mother give me bread.
I don’t know how
I let my life keep going
once our son died.
My pen’s a dying nightingale:
sorrow on sorrow, for here, children collapse
in the streets, tongues of infants cleaved
to the roof of their mouths,
they even rip open pregnant
women. You appeared
in a dream, hair wind tousled.
I want to grasp the light of that dream.

VI

I’m a poet disdained, words deepening,
bleeding brambles of desire never attained,
surrounded by bullets, head slammed
against a trestle, hair turning gray.
But I won’t speak of the torture.
I waited for your letters.
There were no letters.
So, my soul left a black country crossing
borders lightly like clouds,
I carried rain & an accent
& memories.

VII

At dusk, your daughter was born
in detention into no one’s hands.
I pressed her ear against
my heart wanting her to hear
everything you won’t be able to tell her:

Love the morning spring,
Love the bird with an unknown name,
Love the light on a wall,

& repeat great words,
repeat them stubbornly
& dream, yes,
dream dreams,
& pray at the water’s edge.

VIII

My dream?
In the stillness of morning
my prayer rises with a butterfly
& the scent of iris
in a hamlet tucked away over a church,
a balustrade of tranquility where dawn stitches
up the night & lights
angelica at the edge of the sea
& you come back to me—
in poetry, hymns embroidered
in June’s long days,
where nettles overgrow
abandoned homes of exiles.

IX

Remember refugees heading too nowhere?

Remember when we were together in a white room,
curtains fluttering &
a blue feather floating that the thrush lost?

Remember our son listening
to the hollow of a conch shell on the shore?

In poetry one attempts to catch
the color of morning light,
write of love offering
a betrayed world a fragrant rose,
& you survive
not so that you might live,
but to give testimony
& to be courageous when reason fails
& to be courageous in the final reckoning.

It’s the only thing that counts.

That & anger.

X

Am I a nightingale of the pitiful?
Am I to sing of pain?
Woe to the complacent!
Forgive me for writing
unimportant poems on flowers!
Each morning I bow &
write words to find a world of light,
words that fail me. I’m no prophet,
nor do I belong
in the company of prophets.
I’m a poet.

LORD, lumber me with the sins
of poets, that I might rise
from ashes once more.

CENTO SOURCES—Francis Jammes, Seamus Heaney, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández, Valzhyna Mort (translation by Franz Wright and Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright), Adam Zagajewski, Lamentations, Amos, Irina Ratushinskaya, Anthony Doerr, Zbigniew Herbert, Dante, Conceição de Deus Lima, Jazra Khaleed (translation by Peter Constantine).

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