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Four Poems by Claudia Keelan AS WITH ONE SO WITH ALL Principle is only found alone Gandhi, for example A calf was maimed An animal Suffered without cause & so was killed In Ahisma “as with one so with all” A concept of love A slavery John Brown, for example “as with one so with all” & his sons, murdering for him are murdered too
A concept of love Gandhi: My wish: to love you without rights In the absence As I do what is left of God In me FABALISTIC History ran away with little Pluto, Too small and “orbiting irregularly,” It is now relegated to a dwarf planet. History took Christopher, too, from the stained glass windows And I couldn’t look at his magnetic face ever again, Attached to the glove box in our car, The heavy child still on his shoulder, Though we made it safely every day to school, Even after he lost his status. Earth is a small, rocky world, Nothing in size to the gas giants, Jupiter, et. al, And poor Pluto--resembling in the end only Other icy objects in the outer solar system-- Is far to small to be grouped with worlds such as ours. Christopher was taken down by his story And the words the child spoke: “thou hast borne upon thy back the world and Him who created it.” The instruction his action gave to all travelers: To assist without knowing And you too are God-- Thus to Pluto, the ninth planet, farewell, However small, I wonder at your fall, I shall miss you. LITTLE ELEGIES (At The New Orleans) 1. Without his plural The billboard Signing his appearance RIGHTEOUS BROTHER NOV. 11-16 Is epitaph He’s lost That loving feeling Oh, oh, that loving Feeling His S, his other, How much right was His The Brother Who is gone Gone, gone Oh oh who-a 2. (American justice, by rule of congress) The Banker’s family Was awarded More than the Firemen’ & the Stockbrokers’ More than the Cops’ The Insurance Man Won out too, over The small Rosa Who dusted his many pens, And all the way down The many floors, the lives Were rated, all of those Who died September 11th. 3. (cummingsworth) I Loves My Collective Uncollective -ly whee, whee All the way home Only baby goes home & Papa goes To market & someone Else eats meat Getting & spending etc Lay waste But the five little friends too small For the burden Ease it Inside their common nest. 4. (Self and Other) Said good-bye to a way Via age & the end Of My U.S. The notes don’t sound in the spaces Don’t drop into place In the Beloved Plurality Where did you Go wrong This way & that Here & There Green, green Absorbed in flags And a way waylaid I dreamt we ripped up the grass And laid carpet over the earth The heat came The carpet died “We certainly weren’t doing anybody any favors” “& He certainly wasn’t doing her any favors…” Our day was out of favor & this was My Mojave 5. (Robert Creeley) Here can’t recognize There, thought it moves Inside it, And I can’t find You in your poems. Nothing whatsoever Of love, love of God, God love, love or God, In a Pope. It’s the lack That teaches. Look, he’s over She’s there, there… I never touched your empty eye place, Everything all spilled from it. The shape of you, A shape that’s filled with the waiting You gave off, sometimes More patiently than others, Is patiently beside me, Or in me, or both, Right now. You are not an elsewhere! Passing through me Passing through you Though I’m solid, I’m a passenger On an airplane. There’s no you to visit, But you do. 6. (Vietnam) The general is dead, Who said we didn’t lose. The general was a humanist: Kill more, he knew, And they’d have to surrender. But the further East, West More land, Whole villages and families napalmed, The further lost, He and his war, Became. The general was a humanist: Scratching his head On his last day Wondering why, though he killed so many, The East to the West Gave not one bit More land. [from American Hybrid, Norton and Co., 2007] BODY OF EVIDENCE She came as grass She came in the grass She did not ask what is grass via grass She was Green She came in the grass to which Your men had already lit fire She did not ask what is grass via grass she was green She was that to which your men had already lit fire And the fire pursuing her pursuing the grass and burning down the village was beautiful, Typical, typical fire, powerful fire She had lived before fire The grass the native grasses she’d fed on and become never knowing that change-- Human limb, human sex, human decisions and mistakes--would blend so easily into Grass which she’d with pleasure become Via grass she was green and the blunt little Villages the small huts and grazing animals as grass she’d Never distinguish and everything she touched knew Her not understanding was true Beautiful unknowing, this wholly unnatural unknowing of what she’d fed on and become Her muteness, her green and willing greenness It was a society A tribunal And each living thing that had ever fed from her, bled on her, lay dead in her, in turn Was born in her, in the grass which of her we had become. | ||||||||||||
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