THE POETRY CHALLENGE
Who writes THE BEST POETRY
in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod
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THE POETRY CHALLENGE Who writes THE BEST POETRY in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod |
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THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Chinese Puzzle The Universal Language The Translator Dumb Show Yearning for the South In My Friend's Village Village Portrait Black Dream White Sun The Girl Who Real Poetry Jeanne Died CHINESE PUZZLE (in the Ionian Sea) On my back, I become a great turtle treading water with finned fingers webbed feet. head back, ears below the water, I hear ships as distant as the poles, a hum that teaches me all sounds are there for those who listen. Deeper, immersed, I sense all flowing things in layers of salinity and light, undercurrents through a vast cold space of sea. What if I am only in a bowl on the back of a turtle carrying me? Emerging, tired from my swim, my body lies land-heavy on its blanket and I imagine a hundred soft, new-hatching eggs, turtles rushing across sands to slip through a surface lacquered with the endless gold of sunsets. 1 topic no matter where you go: cotton blouses unbuttoned by the wind, watching their kids run rings around a playground.
3 Romano busmen, uniforms bulging in the sun, their diesels sputtering, perspiring on benches on their lunch breaks. 4 topless women lying in a row, arms slung overhead, eyes shielded from the sun, beach banter by the seashore in Dubrovnik. The words, the themes may vary but the 1 topic is the same: My husband/wife just no one understands. THE TRANSLATOR (For Enzo Bonventre) The translator bends close to the page of the original, thrusts back in his chair to gloss a word; wet a finger to turn a page and peck at the keyboard, rendering American into Italian. No computer can perform such magic. Only a blood missing with blood transforms foreign into familiar-- as man and woman become one to make a family, as men draw a drop of blood to become brothers. THE DUMB SHOW Suddenly, I’m dumb. No chance for puns or clever comebacks. Even small talk is too big for me. The man behind me coos to his infant, “Bella ragazza, bella ragazza.” I strain to hear, try to mimic him, hardly more able to respond than she. Later, when I utter the Berlitz string of foreign sounds at customs, they let me in. I don’t know why. I’ve only learned to say what I must-- a catalog of needs, place names, perhaps some private things: Io sono Americano (as if they didn’t know). Io vistaro Sicilia (which is where I’ll go). But first, Dove la gabinetto? I really need to go. Mi scusi, Io parle Italiano male. Yugoslavian's have for their land.) Stay only a week or two and you'll say the land is pristine, driving a mountain pass passed Kicevo toward Skopje, clusters of red-tiled roofs under a slate-blue sky. But the people yearn to burn the sky with the acid rain of industry; are happy to afford an oil change, spilling 10W-40 into storm drains that rush to the river Vadar. See them watching from bridges where the water emerges blocks later to spread like a rainbow promising its pot of gold. (Jozo Boskovski was born in Dimir Hisar, Macedonia) In Dimir Hisar sits a gap- toothed boy, face already tanning into wrinkles. Next to him, a barrel of fermenting plums gathered not by climbing but off the ground where nature dropped them. He feeds branches to a fire under a copper kettle cooking plum mash. A coil in a water barrel cools what he's distilling. Tomorrow, he'll rise, unbathed, and gather plums, kindle the fire from its ash, smile his gap-toothed smile squatting by the kettle that he watches. He'll offer you the sweet, warm cut of schnapps if you ask him. VILLAGE PORTRAIT The sun rises over Ostrilici long after the first light of day, clearing the mist from the valley as old women string tobacco by their stone steps; heating the brow of the maestro kneading brown mud and clay to cement the stone of a new hay house as his helpers set the fresh-hewn beams. For traffic in and out, a small brown horse and cart, a city car to buy honey or a truck delivering a new TV to tempt the folk toward city ways. Mid-day cackles and squeals, merging by 3 p.m. with shouts of a dozen kids released by a school bus, rousing a sheep dog’s bark or donkey’s bray. By the time dark envelops Ostrilici the sun has long since dipped behind the Iron Mountains. Lights dapple the small village together with the last glow of ash beneath a still, the flash of a just-lit fire- place soothing a family into a cool fall night. BLACK DREAM (1988, Macedonia) Here, by a river called Black Drim, I think of calling you. I could say, “I love you,” in six languages. The moon is three-fourths full. A four-piece band blends Balkan songs and American pop. I could say, “I miss you,” six different way. The music fades to faint applause on the veranda by Lake Ohrid. Thirty kilometers across moonlit waters, the mountains of Albania lie roadless and unreachable. I could call and say, “I want you here in so many ways.” But here, where waters swirl to whirlpools rushing from the lake, the sound is sweet and calming. At home, “black dreams” are frightening. At home, there is too little patient listening. I could call you but in any language, I’d fear our arguing. By this dark lake, black river, I relish the silence of all languages. WHITE SUN A white sun sets over the mountains of Macedonia: a statement of purpose. As surely as the waters of Lake Ohrid let sunlight penetrate to depths of thirty feet and more, this sunset needs no filigree-- only the whiteness of mist borrowed from Lake Ohrid, heightening a deep green crest of mountain. The sun, most ancient clockwork, measuring the pace of a donkey bound home after bringing pears; the white sun, deepening the tan of tourists on a hotel shore; the ancient sun, ripening into shadows over this ancient land. THE GIRL WHO The girl who wanted to be one with me, knew I carried a history, still thought it was an easy mystery to solve. Few enter the furnace willingly; burnt once we view love chillingly. You’d think I’d know when someone’s burning me. She says that we can both be free, that she is living energy: “In the moment it came to me I felt the cosmos deep inside.” Whatever it is she sees, she’s charged with passionate intensity. And who am I to doubt sincerity who for a dozen years mistook his pain for ecstasy. REAL POETRY doesn't dwell in the universities it's in the torn cotton jumper of a village carver seated on a low oak stool he's hewn this day carving spoons poetry fills the red clay jugs each balance by a woman fetching water at the spring it's the leather-faced herdsman his walnut-blackened hands holding a staff of smooth yellow wood. Tthe poems of the university require study, entwined with myth, mottled with meanings but real poetry is the slaughter man and the calf its body still jerking as its coarse-haired hide is skinned, revealing a glistening whiteness. JEANNE DIED just when I had finally transcribed her new address into my phone book. Jeanne, whom I saw six or eight times a year, but for twenty years so we could recess a conversation for two months and complete a sentence next time we met. Jeanne died while I was seeking honor as a poet in some distant land because even Jeanne, laughing in the grip of death, joked that they only honor a poet when you're dying. Jeanne, whom I will look for in corners of cocktail parties when our crowd gathers, only to recall she died while I was gone, only to hope the writing of this may yet keep something of her alive.
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