Red Letter Poem #196

 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 #196

 

 

 

 

 

I Cannot Say

 

 

When she asked us outright

Am I dying? no one said You are.

 

A moment among moments

rips a mind. And ever after, is it

 

ill I'm thinking, when I'm thinking

about death? or for that matter ways

 

of living on? What wildness

in a maker's mind prepares

 

the porcupine, or sloth, for earth?  We are

no models of the kind, to speak of speakability,

 

or dying while alive.  We dumped

her dust across a gunnel,

 

into places all themselves revolving, underneath

a moon unmanned—we let her go

 

from every hand and off

the five whirlpools around

 

the local islands. All the while

the long, hewn sides of workboat

 

turned to every tune

the whirlpool played.

 

Some speak but cannot know.

Some know but cannot say.

 

 

      ––Heather McHugh

 

 

 

 

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

 

This is the opening verse of Taoism’s foundational text, the Tao Te Ching.  And if you’re sensing some contradiction here––a book setting out to explain what it’s just decreed unexplainable––perhaps that’s the reason Lao Tzu, the Chinese sage from the 5^th century BCE, composed his spiritual treatise in poetry.  Even today, the deepest, most affecting part of any poem will be what’s not contained within its language.  Perhaps the poet’s voice somehow manages to inscribe a circle of sound and imagery, and we find ourselves suddenly situated at its invisible center, looking out from a new vantage.  Or perhaps the writer creates an archway with those carefully-hewn nouns and pulsating verbs, inviting us to pass through––so readers might shape what we find there, imbue it with meaning.  Or perhaps. . .

 

Heather McHugh is an acclaimed writer, author of eight books of poetry, four more of translations, and a collection of essays.  A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, her work has earned her numerous awards including two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘Genius Grant’.  And though it might not come under the heading of artistic achievement, I think it important to add that, in 2012, she founded the nonprofit CAREGIFTED to provide respite and tribute to long-term caregivers of the severely disabled and chronically ill––an enterprise I view as a natural outgrowth from her lifelong exploration of what makes us human.  Endlessly fascinated with the variety of ways words attempt to embody the inexpressible states of experience, she was determined early on (as she’s written) “to follow every surge of language, every scrap and flotsam.”  But time and its inevitable losses have reshaped the project of her poetry.  “Where once the brightness of life and language sufficiently attracted me, now the darkness (full of ordinals but no cardinals) seems the greater calling.”  It’s been some time since her last published collection, and so it’s always a noteworthy event when new work appears.  Today’s poem is the first of two that will debut in the Red Letters.

 

“I Cannot Say” is a kind of jagged psalm of loss and acceptance.  Creating a composite here of two dear friends who’ve died, the poet finds herself wading deep in the morass of grief, wondering what can be said that honestly reflects such an awe-full moment.   I love how the voices in the opening lines are not entirely distinct, stripped of the customary quotation marks; perhaps this implies that the boundary between the asking and answering, the living and the dying is always more porous than we know.  And then the poet’s lens seems to pull back into a wider panorama of her thoughts––considering what can and cannot be said about the demands existence places upon every living creature, our overwhelming need to survive.  The impression I got was of a consciousness trying to think its way out of the heart’s paralysis, forestalling what it knows must come, until. . .  Brought back to the present moment by a series of simple nouns (dust. . .gunnel. . .whirlpool. . .workboat), we are once again face-to-face with this emptiness beyond comprehension: “we let her go // from every hand”.  When, in the end, the poet offers us an echo of Lao Tzu, it is perhaps a simple acknowledgement that the Way guiding all things, the unfathomable nature of Being, must always remain just that, elusive and deep––so deep that our earnest words, like stones, leave only the smallest ripples when they sink out of view.

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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

 

and 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 Twitter          

@StevenRatiner