What would be the point, in this first winter snow, of
going
back to several of the women whose bodies I have
known
and wondering what they thought about all these
intervening
years. Inevitably it is their children, illnesses and death.
Their art, their work, community. How their words
enter your ears and stay forever! Rib cage and knee.
How we lay on the beds in our youth and late afternoon
light.
At no point will the snow and bare trees stop being
interesting to me. Seven loads of apples went into Jim
Kelly's
cider press Saturday afternoon. A paragraph from
Wendell
Berry's recent essay was read. Those who felt part of
that place
were embraced. Fields of pumpkins, corn to the west
and east. But I remember winter nights hurrying under
elevated subway, Bronx. Alone, unknown, I did not
exist.
The point being maybe now I don't exist anymore than in
Afghanistan.
A land to be admired, like all lands. How lovely the
harsh
mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people,
adapted
ungulates, carnivorous mammals. What is left of them
after
10,000 years of human history. Much has been made of
the snow
leopard, by Peter Mathiessen. The city of Kabul is
understandable
using the very same analysis Jane Jacobs learned from
New York City.
At this point I would have to overcome a deepening
solitude,
the snow of it falling about my ears, to hear their cries
and joys
and understand thanksgiving. Has my father gone to his
grave
without saying his one essential thing? He has said it,
said it
in war and in preparing boys for war, and in peace and
his wife.
Have my lovers gone to their graves already or are they
still
in life? I have heard a random, strange selection of their
words.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem