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The Ship
- Wesleyan University Press
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immortalized and made untouchable. Only he was real in Russia'storment. Only he stood for life. All else was books, and that was the torment. Kaddish Mother of my birth, for how long were we together in your love and my adoration of your self? For the shadow of a moment, as I breathed your pain and you breathed my suffering. As we knew of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light. Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive but your eyes closed, your breathing hoarse. Your sleep was with death. I was alone with you as when I was young but now only alone, not with you, to become alone forever, as I was learning watching you become alone. Earth now is your mother, as you were mine, my earth, my sustenance and my strength, and now without you I turn to your mother and seek from her that I may meet you again in rock and stone. Whisper to the stone, I love you. Whisper to the rock, I found you. Whisper to the earth, Mother, I have found her, and I am safe and always have been. The Ship I saw an ocean liner in the desert, its crew leaning over the railing, as though the ship were plowing through the waves of sand. I was reluctant to ask how a ship came to rest in the desert. The world itself was strange enough, and I did not want to ask questions that would make matters worse. I hailed the crew from my position on the sand 727 and asked where the ship was headed and was answered promptly, Into the desert. I asked to come on board and at once a rope ladder was handed down. I climbed eagerly; we would go through with this absurdity together since, after all, it was our experience, and we could help each other to live it through. The Bread Itself Mother, in my unwanted suffering, I turn to you who knew suffering like an odor of food and breathed it in with that familiarity. I can learn from you to become my self, eating my sorrow with my bread and gazing frankly at the world as a man, as you, a woman, taught me by your silence and acceptance of sorrow, the bread itself. Father and Son A black man is hugging me around the throat from behind with his forearm as he demands in a rapid undertone my money. I think of his embrace as nearly an affectionate one, as if from a son who has come up from behind to demand his stipend for the week in a playful imitation of a mugger. I turn carefully as I would to a son for whom I have the greatestaffection and say gently, "The money is in my breast pocket," and I make a motion toward it with my hand. He strikes my hand, as if carrying on the game of mugger,in case, as in the game, I was reaching for a gun. I say again gently to my black son, "The wallet is in my breast pocket." He does not smile. He lets me reach into my jacket to bring forth the wallet, which I do, and he snatches it from me. The game between us has become serious. I am in danger, but I react with calm. Is this my son, this tall, husky young man who is extracting the bills from the fold and now returning the wallet? I am cautious. I did not train him to be a killer or threatener, but he is serious about the 128 I Poems of the 1980s ...