Three Poems
David Ray
Easter
Another Easter? So soon? Did we not
pray for resurrection just yesterday?
And were we not resurrected? How easy
it is to forget miracles! By the time
we rise out of this life we have forgotten
all but the dark tomb and the weight
of stone pushed aside, hard labor of years.
Only a gargantuan god could do it in three days.
The brief thrust straight up with a swish
from those balloons we call lungs,
expired through the marvelous jet of the anus
is miraculous proof we need not be gods
to rise into the sky. But the black smoke,
you say - how it roiled up from the chimneys
with no singing! You say naked bodies piled
into heaps seemed to lack dignity. And yet
that was illusion, for each phoenix rises again
and again - there is no greater dignity than ashes.
Someone this morning will speak to the matter.
As for me, I get holidays mixed up - St. Patrick's [End Page 115]
and Easter. The Irish have their parades, one
in green, the other in outlandish bonnets, the men
beating drums. Easter is best because there's more
truth in hiding the eggs, finding them again - truth
of the phoenix, truth of immortal man. Gleeful
children return with the eggs. And the eggs
return with the immortal children, holy cycle miraculous -
eggs into ashes, ashes into eggs.
Name Change Petition
Intellectual disgrace stares from every human face.
- W. H. Auden
My neighborhood is named for a man
who massacred Indians - back when
they were not called "Native Americans."
But do I have the courage to attempt
to wipe out this stigma? Should I scrub
my house clean to the bone or outrage
the City Council, demanding a prompt change
of name, as has been done at massacre sites?
I'd prefer to honor a victim, not a perpetrator
who is still praised for mass murder. I chose
to live in a house, a neighborhood, a city, not
an invisible shroud for Geronimo or a host [End Page 116]
of Apache angels. How could they know that,
like their pale killers, their fate is to live forever?
I propose a race among cities and nations to erase
confessions of complicity shining from signs.
Distraction
The poets offer advice, and Oh,
how I need to take it.
Sor Juana: eagles must not
allow themselves
to be distracted. Eluard: It is time
to stop talking to rubble.
Gandhi - I'll dub him a poet: Keep
your eye on the activity,
not the goal, which I guess is what
Thoreau had in mind
when he wrote that the laborer must be
recompensed by his labor,
not by his employer. Best to forget goals -
are they not for basketball
players? When did this madness first
infect us, craving results? [End Page 117]
Could it have been when the teacher
began dispensing grades
and her frowns and smiles with them?
Poor Keats, with his lust
for his books in a row, spines stamped
in gold. Poor little Emilie,
abused by Higginson. Poor little Sylvia,
vowing she'd be happy if
she could just get one poem in The Atlantic.
Poor little me, vowing to get on
with the work when naysayers command
the mails and sonic booms
shake the yard, reminding us who owns the sky,
sadly not my fossilized trilobite.
David Ray's books include The Tramp's Cup (Chariton Review P, 1978), The Touched Life (Scarecrow P, 1982), Sam's Book (UP New England, 1994), Kangaroo Paws (Truman St UP, 1994), Wool Highways (Helicon Nine Ed, 1993), and The Maharani's New Wall (UP New England, 1990), as well as Fathers (St. Martin's P, 1999), an anthology co-edited with his wife Judy. Two of his titles have won the William Carlos Williams Award from The Poetry Society of America, and two have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book Demons in the Diner (Ashland Poetry P, 1999) won the Richard J. Snyder Memorial Award.
