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 #173
A Language for Colors
Asfar she would say
pointing at a yellow tulip.
And the color of grass?
Akhdar.
My young daughter had mastered
not only the colors
but also the throaty KH,
two letters in English
that equal one in Arabic.
I would tell her it’s the same sound
as in khamseh, khubez, sabanekh—
five, bread, spinach
and my favorite name
Khaled, Immortal.
I once confessed to a friend wistfully
that I would not name my son Khaled
because Americans couldn’t pronounce it.
Now I wonder about such wisdom:
even my eight-year-old
could constrict her throat muscles the right way
to say Khaled—
immortal like an ancient olive tree,
a flame that never abates,
a mother’s love.
This spring, I saw a patch
of double hybrid tulips,
asfar tinged with akhdar,
and thought of my daughter’s
satisfied grin at learning those words
thousands of miles away
from her grandparents’ home
in Palestine.
Here we are, hybrid Americans
living between two languages
and speaking in colors,
splendid flowers in a distant field
––Zeina Azzam
“There was a child went forth every day,” wrote the Good Gray Poet, “And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became. . .”. And, upon first reading Leaves of Grass, the truth of that idea struck me immediately, resonating with my own distant memory. In innocence, there seemed to be a much more permeable membrane between our consciousness and the surrounding world. The crossing over from seeing into becoming felt, not only possible, but inevitable, utterly normal. “And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,/ Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.” I can remember, as a child, watching a grasshopper slowly climbing a waist-high stalk of timothy; eye to eye, we ached with the exertion, the need to ascend. (When was the last time I felt such immersion!) But soon enough (and just like Adam in the Garden) even children feel compelled to name those tangible experiences–– grasshopper, timothy, such words came later. And while language created an almost-visceral power and a certain sense of permanence––after all, I can call up that memory many decades later just by speaking those names–– it also brought with it a separation between the beholder and the beauty beheld.
But how to assess the layers of complexity surrounding such a moment if the very act of naming––and the spoken language that child is inheriting––already involves the experience of expulsion, fixed borders, and innocence lost? Palestinian-American Zeina Azzam has had quite an interesting journey toward becoming the poet she is today. Her family on both sides was rooted in Nazareth, in the Galilee. (If memory serves, there was another child that went forth from that ancient town. . .but that’s for another story.) Her parents fled their home in 1948 as war raged around them––a conflict that would eventually establish Israel as the official Jewish homeland. But one person’s liberation can sometimes be another’s dispossession; as refugees, and empty-handed, her parents made their way to Syria, where Zeina was born. After spending some of her childhood in Lebanon, she and her family emigrated to the United States when Zeina was a ten-year-old. And today––writer, educator, activist–– she is the Poet Laureate for Alexandria, Virginia. Astonishing, yes? Last month, Zeina published Some Things Never Leave You (Tiger Bark Press) from which today’s Red Letter selection is taken. In the memory poem, she is teaching her own young daughter (not to mention her readers) the Arabic words for the colors that surround us in the world. She is also offering us a glimpse of the path––the many interwoven paths––words blaze before us and which guide our footsteps. That is true for all of us but especially so in the hyphenated histories (in this case, Palestinian-American) that are integral in the American experience. We carry within us, embedded in our very words, the lives and landscapes that helped give us meaning and purpose. You might be interested to know that Zeina’s daughter, Lena, will give birth to her second baby any day now. And another child will venture out into this achingly beautiful existence, reaching for fistfuls of the yellow, the green, the red––the asfar, akhdar, ahmar––profuse across the heart’s vast fields.
The Red Letters 3.0
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* 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
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