Jeff Aron and Jessica Marta bring us poems by Denise Levertov and Carolyn Forché

cathylstewart

National Poetry Month

Politics for the People Book Club member Jeff Aron share a poem by Denise Levertov with us today:

There are so many wonderful poems to share with friends. I think the book club might respond to the sensibility of this one. Denise Levertov was one of the poets I read as I “came of age” in the the 60’s. One of the ongoing struggles for artists is how to (or even whether to) create and remain relevant in a world in which there is poverty, racism, war and all manner of oppression. It is an on-going question which my dearest friends and comrades have been answering with varying degrees of success for many years. I love and admire them all.  —-Jeff Aron

 

MAKING PEACE

By Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”

But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

***

Our next poem was selected by Jessica Marta, who shared,

“Carolyn Forché describes her poetry as “Witnessing.” As compassionate people we can “bear witness” to attrocities of the world on a personal level.  We can “bear witness,” rather than just watch it on TV and social media. I chose this poem because of its dark and hopeless imagery and sense of hope in a seemingly hopeless world.”

THE BOATMAN

By Carolyn Forché

carolyn-forche-hires-cropped

 

We were thirty-one souls all, he said, on the gray-sick of sea
in a cold rubber boat, rising and falling in our filth.
By morning this didn’t matter, no land was in sight,
all were soaked to the bone, living and dead.
We could still float, we said, from war to war.
What lay behind us but ruins of stone piled on ruins of stone?
City called “mother of the poor” surrounded by fields
of cotton and millet, city of jewelers and cloak-makers,
with the oldest church in Christendom and the Sword of Allah.
If anyone remains there now, he assures, they would be utterly alone.
There is a hotel named for it in Rome two hundred meters
from the Piazza di Spagna, where you can have breakfast under
the portraits of film stars. There the staff cannot do enough for you.
But I am talking nonsense again, as I have since that night
we fetched a child, not ours, from the sea, drifting face-
down in a life vest, its eyes taken by fish or the birds above us.
After that, Aleppo went up in smoke, and Raqqa came under a rain
of leaflets warning everyone to go. Leave, yes, but go where?
We lived through the Americans and Russians, through Americans
again, many nights of death from the clouds, mornings surprised
to be waking from the sleep of death, still unburied and alive
but with no safe place. Leave, yes, we obey the leaflets, but go where?
To the sea to be eaten, to the shores of Europe to be caged?
To camp misery and camp remain here. I ask you then, where?
You tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.
I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.
I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.

 

***

We will conclude our celebration of National Poetry Month on Monday.  Next up, the historical novel, 

The Secrets of Mary Bowser.

Secrets of Mary Bowser Bk Cover

Hope you will pick up your copy of the book today. 

We will be talking with author Lois Leveen 

Sunday, June 3rd at 7 pm EST.

 

Founder of the Politics for the People free educational series and book club for independent voters. Chair of the New York County Independence Party.

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