BIRTHDAY POETICS, 9/11/2008: A RE-VISION

 

 

Wind remains terrified—

rejected breath of unblinking sun—

 

Those days of perfumes

hollowing throats

evaporated now into terrified winds—

 

There, a branch knots itself

into the darkness of your eye (as well, yours)

futile against what unblinking sun reveals—

 

Dust clouds keep recurring

in the East, in the West—

“heaven, earth and all in between”—

as men battle each other

not “in jest” although Allah

in the Koran once raised

the possibility of creation as a joke—

 

What exactly is the redemption

found in the canary singing

atop a skull?  Whose emptied

eye sockets became polished to ivory

by these terrified winds?

 

“Cruelty is a mystery,

and the waste of pain,”

says the pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Still, that infernal canary sings—

 

The mockingbird can suddenly plummet

but just a tic before earth’s brutal kiss

it saves itself by unfurling wings—

Does it mock the terror of winds?

Yes, I think it does. Yes—

 

it mocks me into stepping back

another step to widen the landscape

fighting my blindness.  Until I finally

see beyond the fires and tinder

whose future will be sparks, then flames:

 

the planet, this molten planet

with its ever-terrorized winds,

remains mostly water, inescapable water,

and will remain mostly water until

 

we can believe once more

lightning is benevolent.

 

Without the image of cracked skies

the Ancients would not have known

to carve “lightning marks”, long grooves

along the wooden shafts of their arrows.

 

“The function of lightning marks is this:

if the arrow fails to kill the game,

blood from a deep wound will channel

along the lightning mark, streak down

the arrow shaft, and spatter to the ground,

laying a trail dripped on broad-leaves,

on stones, that the barefoot and trembling

archer can follow into whatever deep

or rare wilderness it leads.”

 

Then, the canary shall punctuate its

song:  Eat!  Eat!  Eat!  Eat!

 

while the wind continues blowing, terrified,

while soldiers continue dying on dusty roads.

The canary shall sing, hopping from one skull to another,

 

for some of us are still struggling to remain infants

who have just learned to hold up our heads.

So we stare about us in honest bewilderment

aiming sincerely to learn.  We want to explore

the neighborhood, view where we have been set

down so precipitately. We still lack the cocksure

air of squatters who have come to feel

they own the place, and through this fakery

become politicians. We are still able

to track blood, hew to our original intentions—

 

We still know better than to write the poem

as a solution.

                        The wind and mockingbird are not

human—

 

            But we are all birthed with a certain memory

still undiluted by the same living that leaches

poetry from the truism: We are all poets.

We arrived with the primal memory of certain angels

choosing to fall and refusing to unfurl wings

            in order to become Human.  Thus: Why?

 

 

 

 

 

© Eileen Tabios

 

(Writ after and during “Heaven and Earth in Jest” by Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, HarperPerennial, 1999)

 

 

 

DISASTER RELIEF

(after "Coals to Newcastle")

 

 

Once, Manila hosted

a massive steaming

garbage dump called

"Smokey Mountain"

 

near which sprung

the shanty town "Tondo"

for residents who lived

by foraging through smoke

for food

or items repairable for resale.

 

The inevitable happened:

an open cooking fire

raged up, quickly spread—

killed dozens.

 

The U.S. Rotary Club,

Manila Branch,

decided to help.

 

They brought trash cans

(freshly painted red)

filled with sand to Tondo.

The Rotarians thought

the Tondoites could use

the sand for dumping

on future fires.

 

What the people who live

from a trash dump saw

was not "fire prevention"

but garbage cans.

Inexplicably filled with sand.

 

One Tondoite strolled over

and stuck both hands

deeply into the sand, feeling

through it as if

he were looking for a

prize in a cereal box.

 

He pulled out his hands,

opened them up under

a sunlit sapphire sky,

He made the Rotarians

watch the sand

rain between his fingers

until his palms were empty

once more.

 

He kept his hands

empty and open

for several minutes

before the Polo-shirted ones

 

suddenly decimated

by charity—

 

this is a story

so old

you can insert here

the ending of

a clichetic whimper.

 

 

 

© Eileen Tabios