We Are Waiting For Peace to Break Out

 -- for Marvin Simmons

We are waiting for peace to break out

We are waiting for flowers to bloom

We are waiting for the moon to come

from behind the black clouds of war

We are waiting for the light

We are waiting

and as we wait we sing songs of celebration

We are waiting

and as we wait we hold out our hands in love and friendship:

white hands extended in friendship to black hands

and brown and green hands of the earth

We are waiting

and while we wait we applaud those who have gone

      before us

preaching peace: all the Martin Luther Kings, all the 

    Gandhis...

We are waiting for peace to break out

and as we wait we dance: we dance with the cold east wind

with the creaking singing branches of giant firs

we dance with the devils

of dust and the angels of clouds

We are waiting

and as we wait we are learning the language

of burning roses and the sunflowers slowly turning 

    toward the sun

We are waiting for peace to break out

and while we wait we are learning to listen

to cries for mercy and cries for help

though we may not know the language

We are learning to listen for the arrival of doves

We are waiting for peace to break out 

and while we wait we are smiling at you

at all of you - at the you and the me in the mirror...

We are waiting for peace to break out 

We are waiting for buds to pop though it is deep winter

We wait for peace as patiently as the drop of water

on the lips at the mouth of the fountain

We wait knowing the water of peace is cool and sweet 

sure that the crystal drop will fall on the earth 

in spite of any of man's evil actions --

 -- Carlos Reyes [Jan Reitsma]

II. The Mermaid (from The Sea Cabinet)

 Between the imaginary iceberg an the skeletal whale

is the stuffed and mounted mermaid in her case, 

the crudely-stitched seam between skin and scale

so unlike Herbert Draper's siren dreams, loose 

on the swelling tide, part virgin and part harpy.

Her post-mortem hair and her terrible face

look more like P.T. Barnum's Freak of Feejee,

piscene and wordless, trapped in the net of a stare.

She has the head and shrivelled tits of a monkey

the green glass eyes of a porcelain doll, a pair

of praying-mantis hands, and fishy lips

open to reveal her sea-carved mouth, her rare

ivory mermaid-teeth.  Children breathe and rap

on the glass to make her move. In her fixity

she's as far as can be from the selkie who slips

her wet pelt on the beaches of Orkney

and walks as a woman, pupils widened in light, 

discarding the stuffed sack of her body.

Without hearing, or touch, or taste, or smell, or sight

she echoes the numb roll of the whale

in a sea congealed with cold, when it was thought

no beast could be as nerveless as the whale. 

-- Caitriona O'Reilly

[Pia, 2022]

Quarantine

In the worst hour of the worst season

    of the worst year of a whole people

a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.

He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.

     He lifted her and put her on his back.

He walked like that west and west and north.

Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.

    Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.

But her feet were held against his breastbone.

The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.

     There is no place here for the inexact

praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.

There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.

      Also what they suffered. How they lived.

And what there is between a man and woman.

And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Eavan Boland

Am I Allowed

Am I allowed

to be happy

while the Rohingya women,

torn at night,

rise in the tattered morning light

and place one foot in front of the next?

Am I allowed

to be happy

while the Congalese's idea

of a brokered-peace

is almost as dangerous

as the war itself?

To be happy

while walls are built

and borders constructed

As the world edges

closer to a steep and rocky precipice?

Am I allowed

While my daughter labors alone

And while my mother waits

for some small invisible spark

to light her last days?

Of my womb scars, my history

you have pardoned me

Telling me to it's ok

to put them down

to lay down

to even dance.

But you aren't

my god

my memory

my conscience.

These things

burn and sear

leaving me

unable to sleep

or to wake

Reminding me

That I don’t have free will

And that the choice

to be happy

is not

without consequences

nor without burden.

Material Witness

The radio reports

there is a genocide happening.

For real and right now.

What am I doing?

Matching socks:

a heap of wool and cotton,

black heel to black heel

rolling, tossing and piling.

And again.

Someone was matching socks

while my family was heaving

worn brown luggage

down le rue.

Did we take a right or a left?

Toward or away from the setting sun?

I know of piles:

eyeglasses, teeth, shoes, souls—

the weight of war.

We forget

what we most need to remember:

how fragile the body

how damaged the spirit

how ragged the socks.

Imprint

i

it overwhelms me, an instant of ocean,

delayed grief for the lost years

ii

i dream you back into existence

i dream you back into

i dream you back

i dream you

i dream

iii

i follow you to an unknowable past, mama

each detail of the journey becoming a magnified ignorance

it's taken this long to find that a solitary walk can result in a headful of light;

returning, i step into my footprints, a kind of retrieval...

cradled in a closed palm, the plaited ring of light

iv

i write until my fingers bleed, I write out my sorrow,

i write into the terror of forgetting

v.

listening to leaves settle, like the drift of a gown on ceramic tiles,

telling you: i think of you, sometimes,

the sky is infinite, maybe

INSHALLAH

While Daniel Johnson couldn’t make it to the party this year, he happened to send an email with a poem on the very same day that we were inviting poems into the living room for P&S. The universe was clearly calling for his poetry to grace our event in some way, and so I’m reposting it here! This poem is from Daniel’s forthcoming book.

INSHALLAH

When it was over,

though it would never be over,

his mom sent a gift

to our house,

a chrome lamp and candles,

a tornado lantern

or hurricane lamp. It depends

what you call

that black wall of water,

skirling and rising,

that takes what it wants:

cars, refrigerators,

cows, wedding

photos, birth records—

inshallah—

your firstborn son.

When it was over,

though it would never be over,

as it would never be

before again, only after,

as the rains, the rains

would never be the same

rains or lashing waves—

I struck a match

against the flooding dusk,

then again,

and hung the lamp.

Atlantis

Being set on the idea

Of getting to Atlantis,

You have discovered of course

Only the Ship of Fools is

Making the voyage this year,

As gales of abnormal force

Are predicted, and that you

Must therefore be ready to

Behave absurdly enough

To pass for one of The Boys,

At least appearing to love

Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,

Drive you to anchor a week

In some old harbour-city

Of Ionia, then speak

With her witty sholars, men

Who have proved there cannot be

Such a place as Atlantis:

Learn their logic, but notice

How its subtlety betrays

Their enormous simple grief;

Thus they shall teach you the ways

To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground

Among the headlands of Thrace,

Where with torches all night long

A naked barbaric race

Leaps frenziedly to the sound

Of conch and dissonant gong:

On that stony savage shore

Strip off your clothes and dance, for

Unless you are capable

Of forgetting completely

About Atlantis, you will

Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay

Carthage or Corinth, take part

In their endless gaiety;

And if in some bar a tart,

As she strokes your hair, should say

"This is Atlantis, dearie,"

Listen with attentiveness

To her life-story: unless

You become acquainted now

With each refuge that tries to

Counterfeit Atlantis, how

Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last

Near Atlantis, and begin

That terrible trek inland

Through squalid woods and frozen

Thundras where all are soon lost;

If, forsaken then, you stand,

Dismissal everywhere,

Stone and now, silence and air,

O remember the great dead

And honour the fate you are,

Travelling and tormented,

Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;

And even then if, perhaps

Having actually got

To the last col, you collapse

With all Atlantis shining

Below you yet you cannot

Descend, you should still be proud

Even to have been allowed

Just to peep at Atlantis

In a poetic vision:

Give thanks and lie down in peace,

Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods

Have started crying, but say

Good-bye now, and put to sea.

Farewell, my dear, farewell: may

Hermes, master of the roads,

And the four dwarf Kabiri,

Protect and serve you always;

And may the Ancient of Days

Provide for all you must do

His invisible guidance,

Lifting up, dear, upon you

The light of His countenance.

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.