After Countee Cullen, "From the Dark Tower"

Today, like many days, I feel as if I am sowing, never reaping,
and wondering if I ever will. I think of late summer, the fruit
sweet and swollen and ripened on the vine and watch,
silent and outside as too many harvest fruit they did not plant.

There is a price we pay, a price we assign to our brothers,
we sell them for a price too cheap, we rob them of their labor.
And yet I know this will not last forever: this blindness is not eternal,
this distraction of song and story that tells the lie we want to hear.

It is not forever that we will give way, give in to these urges,
to the not altogether hidden manipulation of our desire.
One day, these tears and pain will end, and we will see
our fullness, sweet and swollen and ripened on the vine.

And tonight, when day gives way, and night offers some relief,
our eyes will fix on things more distant, on stars and things beyond ourselves.
We will find hidden the beginnings of these flowers, of fruit beyond this world:
more delicate, more perfect, like fruit before the fall.

And in this stillness we will put away the pain we feel
and wait with hope and patience, tending to these seeds.

Peter Bulkeley's "The Lesson of the Covenant"

After being asked by a couple of friends in the last week about my political views, and having a bit of time this evening--I'm much too tired at the moment to approach schoolwork, but being more inclined toward meditation than vegetation--I found myself reading Peter Bulkeley's "The Lesson of the Covenant, for England and New England."

These lines from Bulkeley seem timely:

Though in respect of order and government all things may become new, yet look not after new substantials, new foundations. . . . Take heed of too much of that "new light" which the world is now gazing upon. Some have reported sad things concerning thee in this respect: so much new light breaking forth that the old zeal is almost extinct by it. Herein take heed. "The old way is the good way": this is now ready to be revealed.

And these:

Be not high-minded because of thy privileges, but fear because of thy danger. The more thou has committed unto thee, the more thou must account for. No people's account will be heaver than thine if thou do not walk worthy of the means of thy salvation.

On a related note, my friend Ryan Alexander will be on the radio tonight talking about a project to feed hungry people. You can find out more about the project at youarenotanisland.com, and find out where to listen at reachfm.org. Or watch a short video on YouTube.

Sonnet for Hungry Children: Too Much an Island

I am too much an island, insular and insulated and deaf to the pleading
     empty mouths, voices that might have reached me if I hadn't turned
     away. If no man is an island, then why is it that I've spurned
     these youngest parts of me? Their loss should leave me grieving,
devastated, willing to sell the things I have and give them food, but I am turned
     away, and they are mute, faceless, nameless, voices that I spurn, deceiving
     no one. No one believes that they are mute. I do not believe their grieving
     does not exist. But still I turn away, pretending not to hear, enjoying things unearned.

I drive my car, make plans for dinner, I sip a cup of coffee and ignore
     or make myself forget the things you said. They die, and I know you meant
     it when you said that I should do for these as I would for you. But still, we store
up things, televisions and telephones and computers and automobiles and home decor
     and designer label clothing and money in a 401(k). They die, and I know I have misspent
     the things you've given. Thirty thousand every day, and I am too much an island, too content.

Pantoum for Hungry Children: If We Are Not Islands

If I am involved in mankind, and any man's death diminishes me
so much, you say, as if a piece of this continent were washed into the sea,
then how much might I do, how much might I give, to keep one man alive?
And what, I might add, if it were not a man, but a child? Or many children?

So much, you say, as if a piece of this continent were washed into the sea,
but a younger part, a part of possibility, unplanted soil that has yet to yield its fruit.
Then, how much might I do, how much might I give, to keep one man, one child, alive?
It is too much to stand and watch. It is so much that I might turn my eyes away.

This younger part, this part of possibility, unplanted soil that has yet to yield its fruit,
a life barely claimed, a child whose name I might have known, and thirty thousand more today.
It is too much to stand and watch. It is so much that I might turn my eyes away
from their cries, thirty thousand empty open mouths today that cry to me and say,

"my life is barely claimed, I am a child whose name you might have known," and thirty thousand more today
in a chorus whose pleading is an accusation I can barely stand. It would be better not to watch
their cries, thirty thousand empty open mouths today that cry to me and say
things I cannot understand. I cannot understand hunger. Even when I hear them all

in a chorus meant as pleading, it is an accusation I can barely stand. It would be better not to watch
them die, I think. I am involved in mankind, I will admit, but not in this, I will not admit these
things I cannot understand. I cannot understand their hunger, even when I hear them all.
I cannot face their deaths, individual and collective, early lives cut too soon.

They die. I think I am involved in mankind, I will admit. But not involved in this, not in these
lives so far away, so easily silenced with the flick of just a switch, the push of a button.
I cannot face their deaths. Individually and collectively, these early lives cut too soon
by a hungry reaper who cuts down lives instead of grain, barren fields and empty bellies.

These lives are so far away, so easily silenced. Just the flick of a switch, the push of a button,
and they are mute, faceless, nameless, not a part of me, they are not me, I am not
the hungry reaper who cuts down their lives instead of grain. But instead of barren fields or empty bellies,
they might have lived. Instead, I might have turned toward and not away or listened

when they were mute, their desperate nameless faces not a part of me. They are not me, but I am not
so separate, either. I might have listened when you warned me not to turn away from the least of these,
and they might have lived instead. I might have turned toward and not away or listened
when you said that whatever I did for the least of these, I did for you. But there was a failing, a feeling

of separation. I might have listened when you warned, not turned away when the least of these was hungry,
I might have given food, might have sold the things I have and given, and fed, and known
that it was right to do whatever I could for the least as I would do for you, but there was a failing, a feeling
that perhaps you didn't intend what you said, that it was parable or metaphor or symbol.

I might have given him food, might have sold the things I have and given, and fed this child, and known
that I am involved in mankind and that any man's death, that every child's death, diminishes me.
I lie and say you didn't mean it when you said, perhaps it was parable or metaphor or symbol.
I try to add, to make the sum of loss, the loss of many children who might be kept alive.

Thirty thousand every day, and I am too involved, too separate, too content, too much a piece of earth.

I've Never Taken a Train

I've never taken a train before, except for the train
we took from the east of England north to Scotland.
That ride was blurred by jet lag and fatigue and the worry
of taking our two-year-old daughter to a foreign place.

It was the time we took her to the castle, the one we said was hers,
where the monster no one sees lives in the deep.

We have it still in photographs, sheep still
on the hillside, and in the foreground, the ruins
of the castle that my family once destroyed to keep it
from coming into the hands of the enemy English.

An explosion of gunpowder, the collapse of stone,
I imagine it as a final act of will: desperate men
gathering families, with daughters of their own,
pressing north into a land colder even than this.

There is little I remember of that train. We ate
sandwiches wrapped in cellophane from the dining car
and through giant windows, watched the sea pass on one side
and the snow-capped late-March mountains on the other.

As we passed a city on the line between these two countries,
the rock jutting out to a point, buildings like castles
and the train running right along the coast,
we promised one day to return to make it ours.

I've never been on a train before, except for that one
and the one we took returning.
But that trip is lost—to sleep, perhaps, or the haziness
that comes with age and distance and forgetting.

I say I've never been on a train before,
but one day I will take another with you
up another coast to another place
we might imagine as our own.

Our daughter is grown now and nearly gone
from us, and we from her almost,
almost to the age at which travel for her
will be to us and from us instead of with us.

I imagine us, two instead of three, in a car
of the Silver Star riding coach up an eastern coast.

We'll eat sandwiches from the dining car
look out of giant windows at the passing landscape,
foreign cities and imagine—no, promise
to visit them one day, to make them our own.