The Red Letters
In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.
To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.
––Steven Ratiner
Red Letter Poem #305
Charm for the Last Afternoon
Let it be summer,
afternoon light
slant across the room
where you lie
on fresh linen, cool
water with lemon
at hand. Let the good
mists of morphine
carry you, the clattering
voices fade. And
because you believe
in him, let Azrael,
the angel of death,
be merciful and lift
you from your tired body
into memory, so that
once again you’re
young, legs like a colt’s
running clean city
streets, in your face
the good sting of salt
wind off the Atlantic.
Return to those places
you loved best and were
loved in. Let it be summer,
afternoon, your little
sister practicing her violin
in the room below yours,
each halting note
and hesitant arpeggio
laddering the breeze
to your open window.
––Susan Aizenberg
No matter the age at which they occur, the first experiences of deep loss feel like a rupture in the space-time continuum. This is not surprising when you consider the basic fabric of human understanding. As newborns, we’re such utterly helpless creatures; and those benevolent faces gazing down on us––who kept us warm, soothed our hunger, eased our bewilderment––how could they not be viewed as anything less than divine beings? After all, our very universe revolved around their presence. The possibility, then, of them somehow transforming into absence feels cataclysmic. And later, as we mature, we find ourselves falling in love within this life, again and again (if we’re lucky), each instance reviving a vulnerability rooted in that earliest knowledge. When any beloved is somehow erased from existence, not only is our very cosmos fissured, but we experience a dire sense of our own mortal fragility. It's simply unthinkable: that we, too, might be subject to that oblivion (and I say might because the mind resists actually believing in that circumstance). At moments of impending loss, we often feel powerless to intercede. We can offer little more to comfort that individual in crisis than our attention and––assuming that some form of faith is part of the way we interact with the world––prayer. In her book, Waiting for God, Simone Weil wrote that: “The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle."
In my mind, these three practices bear a striking kinship: attention, poetry, and prayer. Susan Aizenberg––a poet I very much admire for the clarity of her language and the vulnerability of her heart––seems to be engaged simultaneously in all three as she prepares for a devastating loss. There is so much I love about this orison in verse, starting with how modest are the speaker’s requests. She does not ask for a miracle cure or immunity from suffering. “Let it be summer,/ afternoon light// slant across the room/ where you lie// on fresh linen, cool/ water with lemon// at hand.” A simple balm. And isn’t the quiet musicality of these couplets perfectly suited for what the speaker is attempting to do: a supplication to a universe that may or may not be aware of those despairing creatures who reside within its domain? There is almost a subdued moaning sound in the oo digraphs in noon, room, cool and good in the first seven lines. This is in contrast to the string of little plosive t-sounds that quickly follow: lift. . .tired. . .colt. . .city. . .streets. . .sting. . .salt. . .Atlantic––a clattering that the speaker prays “the good mists of morphine” might erase. The speaker’s own sense of faith, though, is never made clear. Instead, she offers an entreaty to the spiritual realm, “because you believe.” The hope is simply that, in the process of yielding to the inevitable, this dear one will be enveloped in cherished memories––“those places/ you loved best and were// loved in.” Perhaps memory is a kind of paradise we each carry with us and need only call upon for refuge. Susan then closes the poem with an image as complex as it is innocent, one that simply takes our breath away: “Let it be summer,/ afternoon, your little// sister practicing her violin//in the room below yours,// each halting note/ and hesitant arpeggio// laddering the breeze/ to your open window.” Utter simplicity. I can’t explain why we are so moved, yet we are. And with just the use of that unanticipated verb, “laddering,” the poet hints at the Biblical figure of Jacob and a vision where the distance between heaven and earth is not insurmountable.
Susan is the author of three poetry collections––the first of which, Muse, was awarded Virginia Commonwealth University’s Larry Levis Prize, and the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. She and Erin Belieu co-edited The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press.) Her most recent book, A Walk with Frank O’Hara and Other Poems (University of New Mexico Press) demonstrates how this poet continues to deepen her creative resources––and what poet, as the years mount, would not want to be blessed with that? More recently, poems have been featured on American Public Media’s The Slowdown, and in journals like Plume, North American Review, Nine Mile, and elsewhere. I was not surprised by how intense my emotional reaction to this poem. My father died when I was eight years old. I was not mature enough to even comprehend what was happening to our family, let alone do anything meaningful to alleviate the shared suffering. I wish, at that moment, I could have conjured a prayer like Susan’s, or any words to let my father know how deep was our caring. I’ve spent a good deal of my life afterward in just such a belated attempt. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “Prayer does not change God, but it changes the people who pray.” I agree with that assessment, and would offer only a small emendation: poetry, too.
The Red Letters
* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:
steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com
* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
* The weekly installment is also available at
the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky
@stevenratiner.bsky.social
and on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
And visit the Red Letter archives at: https://StevenRatiner.com/category/red-letters/
