Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
The Poems Left In Me

The Poems Left In Me

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 10:42 pm by Richard Chess

The Poems Left In Me 2013-04-03T22:42:17-07:00 Richard Chess

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

With gratitude to the poets whose poems gave me this.

The poems left in me a room in which every suffering has a different smell, five summers and five long winters, boatloads of thuya, and silence on a peak in Darien.

The poems left in me grass all blowing in the same direction, twenty seven bathers and one woman, one yearning woman, watching from behind curtains, and angel-headed hipsters on negro streets at dawn searching for an angry fix.

The poems slipped into me, though not like an intruder. The poems left, when I turned the page, when I shelved the wafer-thin book, when I darkened the screen, leaving behind a still, unravished bride. The poems left with a bow not knowing to what.

I would like to say the poems create the eye through which they enter, the ear with which I hear them. I would like to say that the poems form neural pathways in the brain, pathways, in my case, well worn and maintained, regularly tended and groomed. I would like to say that the photons of a poem illuminate my body from within.

I would like to say that I welcome each poem equally—the awful rowing of this one, the hammer of that one swinging overhead so strong, so sure—the way Abraham welcomes strangers to his tent: with lamb, with warmth. They are angels, but Abraham discovers this only after they have gone, only after the miracle they promised comes true.

The poems promised me nothing. More than traces, more than wisps, the poems left in me paired butterflies and squealing housewives. They left in me god’s wrath, coiled forever in my questioning. They left in me a drunken sailor dreaming of baboons.

A door closing on a room to which men at forty will never return, bare-ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang, a church inside which nothing is going on, a filling station, its oil cans arranged to say so, so, so….

Where was it one first heard the truth? The the.

A collector’s life, though what I’ve collected is rarely on display.

Do not be deceived by the shelves and stacks of books in my office, throughout my home. If you think they are what I hold dear, go ahead, choose one and slip it from the shelf, lift it from the stack. Every word is in its place. Not a word, phrase, line, stanza missing. No evidence of what the poems left in me.

My annotations? They prove nothing, neither that this poem left lions in me nor that the other poem left in me a cup with a chipped lip.

Downward to darkness on extended wings: a private life.

So private even I don’t know why it chooses this line rather than that, why it chooses to release, when it does, this line in particular to resound in brain and heart.

Ah, the heart, the forgotten dialect of it, music that hurts.

Where the dearest freshness lives: deep down.

Put your ear to my chest. Can you hear the mermaids, America singing its letter of recommendation? Now, in the black milk of daybreak, seems it rich…sorry I cannot travel the endless distance…longing…tolls me back.

The poems left in me a queer gathering, a mother skunk, a fork, a flight of small schools and creeds that must have crept right out of hell, a thirst for salt. And when I could not see to see, when the last book was flung, mother finally ******, when I dipped my spoon into the alphabet soup of time, when the chicken hawk flew overhead on its way home, when the tourist from Syracuse stared back at me in the men’s room mirror, I alone in the fluorescent moment of recognition knew that I have never been alone.

Michiko, Kai, and Carl, pale Ramón, stout Cortez, Richard Cory, Shulamith, Robert Boardman Vaughan: the poems left in me your names. In memory, my memory, they live. From memory, they are retrieved.

As long as words, what the poems left in me, survive, they may be retrieved again, recovered.

Fragments: keep me whole.

Remembered, misremembered: as freezing persons recollect the snow, first—chill—then stupor—then—letting go.

Previous Post

April 3, 2013

The Seed in the Grave

Next Post

April 5, 2013 The Moveable Feast of Memory

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which book is the largest by chapters in the Bible?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Proverbs Psalms Genesis Isaiah