Toward evening, the natural light becomes intelligent and answers, without demur: "Be assured! You are not alone...." —From Descartes' Loneliness by Allen Grossman
Praise Song for the Day BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other’s eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin. We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider. We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what’s on the other side. I know there’s something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables. Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love? Love beyond marital, filial, national, love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to pre-empt grievance. In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praise song for walking forward in that light.
'To survive the neighborhood and shield my body, I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshakes. I memorized a list of prohibited books. I learned the smell and feel of fighting weather. And I learned that "Shorty, can I see your bike?" was never a sincere question, and "Yo, you was messing with my cousin" was neither an earnest accusation nor a misunderstanding of the facts. These were the summonses that you answered with your left foot forward, your right foot back, your hands guarding your face, one slightly lower than the other, cocked like a hammer. Or they were answered by breaking out, ducking through alleys, cutting through backyards, then bounding through the door past your kid brother into the bedroom, pulling the tool out of your lambskin or from under your mattress or out of your Adidas shoebox, then calling up your own cousins (who really aren't) and returning ot that same block, on that same day, and to that same crew, hollering out, "Yeah, ************, what's up now?"...' 'I recall learning these laws clearer than I recall learning my colors and shapes, because these laws were essential to the security of my body..." Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between The World And Me
PASSED The Second Coming of the Lord our God took place at the base of Senlac Hill in the fright, the fear and the dark one thousand and 33 years after his Father He faced, said “It’s finished,” and Romans slashed His side for a lark The Third and the Fourth tries came in places far flung Bright skies and shores, Dar Es Salaam and Palau The Fifth and the Sixth times amidst fire, smoke and dung and the pole hangings of Romani in Dachau Each and every time He’s come to redeem us Commanding love with a message merciful, kind we’ve stabbed him in his neck, run him down with a bus or his birth we’ve Romantically declined He’s pondered and thought, all of Heav’n distraught, about a Thirty-fifth Coming to host Holy Mass but then He remembers, fanning sad spiritual embers, that our time has just simply…passed
The Gift Outright BY ROBERT FROST The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.