Can you be stunningly inventive,
linguistically eclectic, unflinchingly brave
but still grounded in the necessary and sustaining?
The reflecting pool surrounded by the beautiful
well-manicured lawn is flanked by the verticality
of cypress trees and liveried servants.
Evenings when the sky is clear and delicate
as a flute of blown glass, voices carry
through the air. Tonight, over the barely
audible hum of the electric fence,
someone is reading a poem threaded with bodies
and explosions, the words our shared
humanity snaking through like a dark skin,
like a cloudy vapor, like a distant glacier
unsheared, melting soon into the sea.
In response to Via Negativa: Grave.
How far have we come
from the shared rib,
the scuffed knees and the frayed mats,
the light of a thousand lanterns?
So far that in a woman’s face as she weeps
or a man’s body used as a shield over others
we don’t recognize our own?
So far that when a child washes up dead on a shore
we ask each other whose he was?
—
Thank you for the wonderful poem, Luisa. I am gripped by the image, “a poem threaded with bodies”.
And thank you, Gemma, for the searing response. _/\_ Ang ganda.