Spelman: A reverie

This is all I have: a memory
of a warm afternoon, cold drinks in our hands,
sitting next to each other on a patio overlooking
a wide, green lawn. I think we had just helped
some friends move in. Ten, fifteen minutes
at most -- that was all we had. I can't
even remember if we talked. Words were
not the important thing, the remembered thing.
Then someone came in and saw us sitting in the sun,
laughed, and said that she could imagine us
just like that, as old men in a nursing home
taking in the sun, and each other.

Have you forgotten? Not me, for
even now, her words make me dizzy,
make the contours of my life shimmer
for a moment. I whisper this memory to
myself, fearful of losing it forever. I hoard it
for myself, for it is my one treasure, the mirror
that tells me who I really am.

But the memory must pass. I grasp this table
to steady myself, to regain a sure footing
in my familiar world. I must come back.
My feet must find the floor again. This much I know.
All I can do is to offer this memory to the air,
whisper it another farewell of longing and
allow it to vaporize, once more, like you.

I am one of the lucky ones II

Last night I watched you sleeping,
your body emptied of emotion, lost
in the tangle of sheets and pillows and
dreams and memories. We had quarrelled,

my words a sad and weary refrain
that no longer had any feeling or meaning
when I spoke them: soap bubbles with no substance,
no strength to soothe or charm or forgive.

Asleep, your body breathed beauty,
but the world you lived in seemed lost to me.
I could not enter your dreams, your secret
mysteries, even if I emptied myself.

I could not know your touch nor feel
your distant heart. In that midnight stillness
I tried to penetrate your silence, to remember
once more the path to your luminous core

that keeps me whole. But your skin,
your breath, your body stayed dark and silent,
the air around you dense with denial,
forbidding to me, an exile from you,

unable to enter and unwilling to depart
in loss. I do not know if daylight will bring
direction, or if it will sear the wounds of strangeness
with numbness. I do not know which is better.

But now, next to you, I know that
night brings sleep. I know that night brings
mystery. And I know that I want you
to hold me, to untangle the way

and to smooth out the crumples of
my fallen life, and to allow your grace
to fill my emptied whole.
I am one of the lucky ones because of you.

18 December 2006

Christmas 2006

"November overtook July 2006 as the worst month for conflict prevention since CrisisWatch began publication 40 months ago. Fourteen situations deteriorated in November, with seven conflict risk alerts (in anticipation of new or significantly escalated conflict). Improvements were noted during November in only three situations, and no new conflict resolution opportunities were identified for the coming month." - International Crisis Group website

We forget that you, too, were born
in an unstable world of war,
in a nation stamped out by siege
and the carnivorous instincts of man

or beast that lifts its ravening head
towards your ancient city. Son of God,
son of a carpenter born in disgrace
and scandal, the rumours of war

overtaken by the mystery and the
shame of your birth. We forget that
you, too, brought upon
another war, a fierce and second

Passover, but this time for the
children, this time for the mothers
in mourning, fleeing and dying
for their children

torn from them. Where is their
voice? What is their song,
their insane and berserk carol
that no one dares to listen

or to sing? We forget that you, too
fled -- fugitive, refugee and survivor
of an ancient and terrible hatred
that continues to duel

with your unearthly song,
your unearthly light -- stranger in a land
of peace, a land of slavery,
a land borne by the blood

of the firstborn. The cries of war
grow ardent and strong. Its stories
persist. Its voices shadow
over all: your world, your

people, your inheritance and
your loss. How do we sing your songs
again? Where do we learn to listen?
And how do we remember, again,

that you, too, were born in a world
like this, to a people like us who
sing and dance with madness,
trampling on your gifts?

13 December 2006

I am one of the lucky ones

Neela Banerjee, The New York Times
12 December 2006

I am one of the lucky ones.
I see the colours that exist
between the lines, surrounding me
and filling the world around me,
even the people around me
with a fierce and fiery incandescence:
quotidian angels here on earth, grappling
with insouciance and with wonder.
And I hear their soulful, wandering keens
echoing in my quiet heart, chords that
do not want to resolve, ardent
in their fluidity, intent on
sustaining their uncertaining.
And I can walk the unknown paths
that no one has ever seen, tracks
not made by feet but by
my doubts and my restlessness,
to go to the still places of rest
and of insight and of grace.

These are transitions of grace.
These are unexpected blessings
that I accept with trembling hands,
and though they flow away,
they leave their luminous trails
for me to find again.

12 December 2006

The sense of a city

On 5 November 2006, the International Herald Tribune carried an article entitled "Helping a city stay spic and span," on the volunteers who have been culling crows in Singapore, some for as many as 2o years. According to the article, crows cluster near the Somerset subway station in the heart of the city and find sanctuary in shopping areas like Orchard Road, that are off-limits to men with guns as "the risk of cracking a window is very high".

These are our magi, the men
who with their hands can make the sky
go dark with wings and feathers,
vortex of claws and cackles,
fear mixed with tremulous flight.

These are the magi who renew this city,
cleanse its earth and bless its skies,
whose war is never done:
cycles of ceremonious dispensation
that can only stay the terrible tide

of darkness. And even these our magi
cannot work their craft in the city's heart --
a city of glass, mute, shivering, stark and
mocking, stubbornly resistant
to the radical re-interpretation of magic.

What happens if we melt the glass away?
What happens if we push and shove
and clap our hands to try and wound the glass
to create a space for magic
and the spontaneous lifting of hands

in surprised praise and supplication,
the tremulous poise of an uncertain city --
city of glass, city of magi,
city of birds whose encircling flight
reminds us of our own?

6 December 2006

These are the things I have not lost

"Smile a little to yourself for what you have not lost." - Cyril Wong, "What we are given"

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit." - Virgil, "The Aeneid"

"You lose more of yourself than you redeem, doing
the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it's time to
swim out on your own." - Seamus Heaney, "Station Island"

"Lose something everyday." - Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"


These are the things I have not lost,
the things that tether me -- or cocoon me -- or
I would simply dissolve.
These are the things that keep me lucid
in the midst of loss.

The sun's brittle light, harsh and urgent,
that lures me back to where I am, who I am
and reminds me that night fades into day --
the unchanging pattern of the hours that holds
all things, lost and unlost, together.

It is the memory of places and the place of memory --
Mont Royal, Pasir Ris, Whitsunday Island --
the sense of folding and unfolding ourselves
into these places, the graceful, deceptive art of
origami in my mind.

And it is your voice, your wholeness
that holds me, keeps me, dissolves into me
or else I could not grow, you whom I have
not lost, although perhaps you
have lost even more than I.

These things I have not lost. I will
give thanks for what I have and what I
do not have. And I will give thanks
for who I am, and for who
I am not and can never be.

6 November 2006