I write out the pain
because it hurts too much
to keep it inside.
And it never makes anything
Better
to tell anyone
when it’s still there
and real.
So, I write the pain
from my shadow
and lay it in the light
of white blank paper
Till joy—
a little brook—spills
sweet and fresh
against the thirsting
empty places
where the hurting was
And I smile
again
and go on living.
Is my being so unlike,
Unknown, unseen
that like some dark star
only a subtle change
in the pattern of the others’ lives
suggests that I may be?
Is there no astrologer
no physicist
no mathematician
who might at least
suspect the hint of me?
Or shall I cease to be
before even one
briefly dreams
that I once was?
After such a promising start
What a sad ending this is,
Without even one curtain call—
Just a single word
Riding the crest of a sigh
Into silence
good-bye
If you are late to the Christmas Service
You might see George
Huddled in the dark
Beside the stairs to the door
But in your hurry
You probably won’t
And that’s just fine with George.
He comes every year for the songs
That are sung as Christmas Eve
Becomes Christmas Day,
For the music he hears then
Will quiet the train in his head–
The train whose clanking and rattling roar
Shreds every thought before it is grown.
The music of midnight Christmas Eve
Shifts that train to a distant track.
Its sound is not so loud.
It is drowned out by the songs,
The songs that bring a warmth
That has nothing to do with coats or fire.
When the first door opens at Service end
George scuttles quickly away
Deep into the darkness where no one looks
Down to where the garbage is kept.
While the people and their noise
Slowly fade into the distance
George tries hard to hold
In his head
The songs he has heard.
If he is lucky
He will sleep without dreams
Tonight
While the music hushes
All other sounds that trouble
His days.
If he is lucky
He will sleep tonight
In the quiet
Of Christmas peace.
Around and around we spin,
Revealed at the instant
Of our isolation
Within the deep black night.
All our little lights flicker, echoes
Of color already slipping
Into an infinite depth of shadow;
The flame and cry
Of our brief life
A mere nanosecond anomaly
Already disappearing
Within the dead black globe of night.
The water is swift, yet gentle,
Flowing from the source
Of the thought arising from a moment—
A thought which, though awaited,
Has taken me unaware,
Shifting my little barque
From the deadness of the shore
Into this current.
The river is clear and sparkling.
The air is wonderfully fresh
As if newly washed with rain.
I am borne quietly rocking
Toward a horizon not noticed before.
My journey’s end, far away yet,
Seems to shimmer with hope.
The sweetness of the promise there
Drifts back across the water.
I breathe in its fragrance
And feed my waiting heart.
Then, with the gracefulness
Of a child slipping into sleep,
The vision melts down the sky into night.
The water beneath my small crafts stills.
I hear only the small, gentle slapping
Of the water against the side of my boat,
And my own breath stirring in the balmy air.
The sky is filled with stars—
Each sheer point of light a reminder,
A memory of the sweetness of hope
At the edge of the horizon—
Floating here, I am at peace and dreaming
Of an unexpected moment
Lighting up the edge of day.
The vision offered to the waiting heart.
On these streets I am a stranger
An interloper
A slight tang of awareness
Rippling across an ordinary day.
Perhaps because I am not intimate
With the history of these streets
My ears are vulnerable,
to their stories:
The babble, the songs
The wailing, the screams
A sigh, a whisper
Each reaches out to me
Wraps its insubstantial fingers
Around my throat
Till the shape of words
Erupts in my mind,
Without instrument or voice
melodies
Sway and weave about my feet
Till it is dancing shoes I wear
As I perform all alone here
On these unfamiliar streets
The people I pass are illusory
Disconnected images
Emerging out of the unknown
Then melting away
beyond the knowable
I wander these streets
As if in a dream
Thought flowing into thought
Not bound by logic’s limits
The morning is reluctant
To leave off dreaming
And I have been caught
Within the surreality
Of its waking
Far from home
We students wrote
To our families.
The others sent word:
Mother, there’s a foreigner
I’ve met…
And the answer came:
Sorry, not at this time.
When I wrote about
My foreign friend,
My answer was
“Of course, bring your friend.”
The others wrote again:
Father, my friend
Is of a different race…
In answer their fathers wrote:
Not here, my child,
Not now.
But when I wrote the same,
I was told, “Your friend is welcome
In our home.’
When the others wrote:
My friend is crippled, Dad…
Sorry, we can’t deal
With that here
My dad replied,
“We’ll manage somehow.
Tell us what is needed.”
The others wrote once more
My friend, Mother, does not
Share our beliefs, but…
Their mothers responded,
My son, what would we say
To one another? Sorry, no.
My family wrote:
“Perhaps your friend is wiser than we.
The door is open, a room prepared.
Bring your friend and hurry home.
We are waiting. Love from all of us.”
I chose to write
In an alien voice
To speak out
To explain the why
I forced myself
To travel roads
Unknown to me
To hear the howls
Of broken destiny
It is all spilled
Now upon inked pages
That pain, the twisted limbs
Of history that maimed
Lie bleeding across pages
Charred by words burning holes
Leaving me here
Horribly bruised
Stranded where I sought
To be—
No-man’s land—
Waiting to learn of peace
Holding my white flag
Of surrender
It was protest in a time of protests. It was a song of joy sung by dreamers in a time of dreamers in search of joy. It was a record of reality: rainbow illusions becoming khaki and guns. It was already a memory of a promise lost in the yesterdays of misbegotten heroes, children without parents, and charlatans.
Yet, they sang—the players and the audience in the theater—at the final moment as if the dream was not already lost but alive and theirs to hold that night.
I joined in the song, my tears falling for all the lost hopes, as together we all sang and sang again: “Let the sun shine, let the sun shine…”