By Arna Bontemps
I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
that wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
I scattered seed enough to plant the land
in rows from Canada to Mexico
but for my reaping only what the hand
can hold at once is all that I can show.
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
my brother's sons are gathering stalk and root;
small wonder then my children glean in fields
they have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.
We acknowledge ourselves
BY Aisa Warden
before we bring this meeting to order
we want to acknowledge ourselves, the Kaktoviġmiut
yes, Siliun, this is how they are doing things nowadays
we are doing it right
we acknowledge ourselves, the Kaktoviġmiut
we are the people of this island and of the mountains and lands around us
and all our traditional hunting areas
since before the military came
and bulldozed our old sod houses our entire village
so they could make a runway and yes we are still angry about that
and we are still wanting reparations for what they did
they finally did take that hangar down and it
looks better without that big old thing on there
and I know we are still looking for
what was lost in the nuna on that day
what they did was wrong
and we are still here
and even though the military still today has that huge other hangar
on the other side with that
military man
who lives in there that we have
never met
and the other that relieves him every three weeks or so
we were here before
they put those big humongous radar ears up
and then took them down
and yes they left many barrels and still never got all of them
we all want all their residue
to be
off our island forever
we were here before
the government started drawing arbitrary lines
encasing us into this wildlife refuge
without our full knowledge or consent
where strangers break into our cabins on our own land
up in the mountains each and every year
no matter how many signs we put or what kind of locks we use
and because of these borders not our own
we cannot hunt the way
our relatives in other
villages hunt
we have more restrictions and regulations than the others
yet we still are able to get the food we need
around the land we care for and know
ii, we are still fighting these arbitrary borders and lines today, thank you Ekowan
and also thank you aŋaaluk for those letters you put out
they needed to see that
and all of us fighting for our ways of life and as we continue to fight
even in this strange language
we had to learn to fight them with
arii, piliaqsuŋa taniktun uqaġama
we acknowledge our Elders that are still on this land
and our Ancestors buried just over there and over there too
and our own people who are still living here
especially the little ones like Uqumaiḷaq here
and all our future relatives yet to be born
we acknowledge and remember
that the military did experiments without our consent
on our Elders when they were kids
and the government has never owned up to these injustices
but we remember what was done
and yes some Elders did get compensated for that radioactive iodine they put in their veins
yet not for the other forced experiments
and we remember how we were also made to send our young people away
to go to school
and how they came back
having to relearn their own language
and many of them left right away again
yet many stayed home
and the others always return
and belong home here
we the Kaktoviġmiut remember how we have always been whole
nakuurugut
we are good we have always been good
living here in the ways taught to us by our Elders
and our Elders’ Elders’ Elders
and even though there were two waves of diseases that we didn’t know
how to fight
naturally
we lost many of our people
yet many of us survived
those waves
and since we are talking about these things in a community hall meeting
might as well mention the alcohol that came to kill us
and the cancers that we can guess where those came from too
and the fog of smoke and qaaq that has stayed and lingered
and I know that we aren’t used to acknowledging ourselves
but when me and Fannie went to the big meeting in Anchorage
they did one of these
land acknowledgments
so apparently everyone is starting to remember
and we remember too
how to acknowledge one another
and how we remember our relatives and how we are related
we remember how to sing and dance and how to take care of
the land
because we need to acknowledge our young people too
even the ones who are pretending they don’t understand
or can’t talk yet
we know you are paying attention
yet we also want to say the young ones have also been having a lack of
listening
and they need to fix that right now
oh and of course
our relationship to the animals
the aġviq, the tuttu, the fish, the nanuk, the qavvik
oh yes and the aiviq and the beluga whale
and I know I am forgetting some animals thank you Ukpik
and we were here before the tourists started to travel here to see our
polar bears
without giving back to our community
and yes we are starting to regulate those tourists too
as a community
working together
yes the amaġuq and I know we have too many animals to mention right now
and we need to get started with these door prizes soon
yet let me say one more time
because I see that Michael just came in the door
we the Kaktoviġmiut acknowledge ourselves
sovereign here on our own land
sovereign here forevermore
despite all of these other ways
in which they thought they could make us forget
or think we were broken
we are whole and good and we remember all of it
an unbroken line
going all the way
all the way
all the way
back
from the time before the time before
nakuurugut
we are the Kaktoviġmiut, the original people of this place
we have never ceded our lands
we always remember our long long long ago ways
that we are living even today and even though we are thankful for many
modern tools
that we put to use in the ways that our Elders agree with
the outsiders’ ways are not our ways
we belong here
and on our mountains and all the places near that we travel for food
and on the ocean
we remember who we are
today and forevermore
we acknowledge ourselves
in our power as Iñupiaq
aulayaiqsimarugut Kaktoviġmiut
tavra!
now Alasuuraq will draw the first prize because I believe he is our oldest
Elder here
we will draw a couple few more door prizes
now at the start
and then the rest at the end of the meeting
I know we have a lot to talk about
BY W. S. Merwin
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
1879 –1955
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
“The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens
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BY Carolyn Forché
Appears
We weren’t told as children there is no going back.
But we are allowed to keep with us a few times and places
thin as tissue paper in the mind.
Finding these in the mind is like moving through a forest at night.
We do this alone in our rooms in the dark by light of an open door.
Then a thought comes like a bird landing on a blanket.
Someone else’s papa coming toward us with his belt off.
“Ever since he came home from the war,” we would say of him.
While we children hid in the holes we had dug in the fields,
in the houses we built in the trees.
This is a house of spider-lace and blankets filled with down
from geese that once flew in the clouds.
In the carpenter’s atelier, there is the beginning of a boat that will
someday move along the river.
It will take on water in the rain but will never sink.
It will know what it is doing among the reeds.
It will sail even in a heavy dew. As light a river as that.
Wondrous to be floating in a boat we have made from oaks sealed with pitch.
Wondrous to think that we are all floating in a boat we ourselves have made.
Our river, glazed with light, moves more swiftly for some than others.
It is not bottomless. Not without a vast sea into which it will vanish at the end.
Strange, after so many centuries, to be alive at the end.
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Make it your own.
Just you better be careful on how you do it.
Before your cover is blown.
#BENOTEWORTHY
#piccadillyinc
Lewis Carroll
1832 –1898
A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?
H. J. Massingham
You saw the world a golden age,
A country wench a Queen,
What is dull, wonted, formal, stale
Magnificent Has Been;
Against you, zany of world’s stage,
The man of safety wins;
But heaven shall be your own tilt-yard,
Its palaces your inns.
LETTER VII: Remember to Breathe
Margaret Rhee
To hear poetry and to read poetry are different acts.
Reading poetry makes me feel calm.
And you, dear reader, I wonder if
you also feel this way.
Consider this articulation.
Reading poetry: You must gaze upon, pay attention to words, and
consider pacing,
an attentiveness not usually asked
in our contemporary world.
I gaze into your eyes, we remember to breathe.
Turn the page.
Reading poetry is the opposite of eating with
your phone
Without thought to the
opening and closing of one’s mouth
The taste and texture of the food on the edges and tips of
one’s tongue
Warmth of the food, and how it envelops you.
A different kind of information than the Scroll.
Lord George Gordon Byron
1.
As the Liberty lads o’er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
2.
When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding sheet
O’er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has poured.
3.
Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!
S. Brook Corfman
For ten days I slept only four or six hours, subject
to a small blonde bulldog. But deeply, her
a burr to me. I’d never had a pet; I did not expect
to let her into the bed. But I soften and warm.
Like my old love I loved her despite, which made it
no less true. It seemed the lake was leaving me
the longer I strayed east. My choice was not choice but a wish,
only mine, the way his naps in late afternoon were his.
When we watched the flat world we weren’t
flat anymore, especially me, my small breasts, but we couldn’t
parse it. The night is still there behind the day.
A new feeling told me how beautiful I was
and how silly was it that I agreed. This was a true account
of how it will have happened, and then it was simply true.
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Pablo Neruda
1904 –1973
There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.
I’m encircled by a single thing, a single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word “noche”:
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
things of leather, of wood, of wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.
I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me.
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Thomas Centolella
with the shock of hospice behind her
and her ashes scattered on her cherished Pacific.
She’s flipped the hourglass and stopped it at 29,
when her hair was still chestnut and waving
to her waist. And because it’s November and nighttime
she’s wearing one of those vintage wool coats,
wide lapels, no buttons or belt, a blue nearly gray
in the foggy noir light of the streetlamps.
It’s cold enough she has to hold it tight
against her body. Too cold for the emerald
silk teddy, or her long tanned legs in b-ball shorts,
ready for some serious one-on-one. I’m dying
to stop my steep climb home, turn around and ask her
if she’s really here, but Orpheus is in my ear,
warning me not to make that old mistake.
It’s about trust, I think. Keep moving
through the gloom of a spinned myth:
let those you’ve loved come back
when they’re ready, when you’re ready,
as if no one were lost to begin with.
