It’s Easter weekend on the Row, and I’ve just come off of three days straight of 40 productive, rewarding, but exhausting back-to-back student conferences over literary research papers. By Thursday, Day 3, I was doing a lot of thinking about death and resurrection, believe me. I’ve also been thinking about the American commercialization of Easter – coordinated outfit/handbag shopping, forced childhood scavenging for outdoor-contaminated candy, mutant egg-laying bunnies, and a lust for patent leather shoes. The fact that so many people live comfortably with the bizarre commingling of a high holy day and a shopping holiday is a testament to our flexibility, I guess.
There are loads of other commemorative days being celebrated in April, too, like Hindu Ramayana, traditional Chinese Qingming, Jewish Pesach, Baha’i Ridvan, Theravadin Buddhist new year, Earth Day, Cosmonaut’s Day, and probably many more. And, it’s National Poetry Month, for Pete’s sake! So here’s another poem, this one long. I wanted to see if I could (1) write a poem that sounded like a “universalist” chant; (2) write it in 9-line stanzas to represent the multiples of 9 beads commonly found in Buddhist malas, Islamic tasbih, and other kinds of prayer beads, and (3) incorporate John Lennon’s mantra, “Love is all you need.”
Happy holidays, whichever ones you observe…
MALA
In the beginning
was the breath
inspiration exhalation illumination.
It was and was not, stirring
pale light, salt, clay
in a deep cauldron of stars
pitched to one side
spilling gaseous invocations
into thin air—
ohm mane padme hum
ohm namah shivaya
our father our mother
Saturnian retrograde yin yang
nameless spirit unified heart and mind
mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih
St. Jude thin ray of hope
grandfather grandmother
Jahveh I Am That I Am
and the breath shaped its perfect
full mouth around the Word
formed us from three elements
set us down in the fourth, fire of the Word,
let us play and burn for ten-thousand years
making oblations in the fire
tears wine sperm tears blood
let us tease spark from vein
and hold it against our skin
until cinders worked their way beneath our nailbeds
until flame licked the bone
until spark curled up in the belly
until the only heat was in the belly
until the air was cool and dry
until the ground went cold
until we understood flame and ash
until we sat naked and shivering
until the rain fell.
Pools formed in indentations
footprints of wandering gods
and on the slick surface of the water
we saw ourselves, clumsy, too fat or thin,
aching and wounded
we saw each other only in that rippled mirror
eyes cast down and fixed
on an image of our own bluing upturned hands
so delicate so hypnotic that we
would not cross the water with a poultice
would not set the bone
would not speak the Word
and darkness fell. In the blackness
silhouettes against a pocked moon
we pushed and pulled the muck
into mountains snowcapped and treacherous
until fenced in, we came to adore
the dark and silvered mirrors
distorted images of bent knees, sloping backs,
small breasts, muscled thighs.
We formed our small trembling mouths
into awkward shapes
stood half-erect with heads tilted
filled our lungs with air
filled the air with only hoarse wavering
grunts and hisses
could not fit our mouths around the Word.
The earth, this pool, is the cracked mirror
in which we are still caught as
ten thousand planets heat and cool
ten thousand stars blink to life
scatter, explode in the watery night
while we shiver, naked,
dim shadows against a cave wall, mouthing
the Word that would release us
the Word we clamp behind our teeth.
In the dark, in the cold
in crags or on sudden plateaus we strike
blindly at rocks, dig at the root
but always make our way back to the water
back to our selves
rippled and silver in brief glints of fog or moon
broken when the breath moves the Word
across the surface of the water
where we lean in, locked in a long gaze.
And sometimes we hear it,
the perfect Word skimming the water, pushing up
along rock faces, drifting into gaps with a sigh
a beautiful sad tremolo
that clashes in dissonant chords
with cries from across
a distant mirrored pool
brackish now, encircled in a white salt ring,
our temporary crust of light.
ohm mane padme hum
ohm namah shivaya
our father our mother
Saturnian retrograde yin yang
nameless spirit unified heart and mind
mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih
St. Jude thin ray of hope
grandfather grandmother
Jahveh I Am That I Am
make my jaws unclench
make my fists uncurl
make my heart split open like a ripe plum
make my arms reach out over the water
make my eyes look up from this illusion
make my silver blood pour out over the ground
make my lungs fill to bursting, my mouth round,
help me make the sound, the only prayer, the Word—
Love
I always feel a wee bit closer to St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill, at the end of the semester, when my own mental health is in desperate need of a blessing. So on this last day of National Poetry Month, here’s my petition to the determined Irish lass. (For more info on the sile na gigh mentioned in the poem, see http://www.sheelanagig.org.)
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