Myth of Arrival

My dear friend Evseyeva Ekaterina sent me a new photo for our joint poetry-photo project. You can check out the larger version on her personal page I set up (see the menu bar to the right) … and as soon as I have a poem worthy of the photo I will add that too!

"into desire I shall come"
– fragment 96. Sappho. translated by Anne Carson (193)

Desire, like promises, are weighing heavily on me today. Not desire as carnal, but desire as in action. My friend Katya sent me a new photograph this morning. She wrote in her letter:

I made [this photo] after watching the movie "Da Vinchi Code," the idea of the movie influenced me much, especially, the idea of the Rose, that it is a sign of some help for all the suffering people who are officially neglected and restricted from their rights (Middle Asian women included). But - this particular work is not actually about the movie's idea, I was just still wearing the costume, and decided to make some other shots, so ended up with this apple…and I thought about those Greek myths about the goddess of beauty,Afrodita…and that this fruit was the case for argue among some other goddeses.

I spent some time thinking about that. For all of us not restricted by others. For all of us who can do things to help others, who should but don't. Then there is Aphrodite's apple. The apple has many functions in mythology (there is the Fall in the Garden of Eden; Paris in Greek myth is suppose to give a golden apple "to the fairest" of the goddesses, oi vey!) but to me the apple is a promise. A promise to remember where I am in this world. The privileges I take for granted. The directions I need to go.

I am leaving for Chicago for several days. For several days I will be away from all this — this blog, these poems, all these photographs — it is the time of giving thanks. It is good to give thanks, though I have friends who argue it is hypocritical. Today on NPR the headlines read:

* The United Nations reports that more than 3,700 Iraqi civilians were killed in October;

* A Marine investigation into the killing of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha is almost done.

Considering all of that. Considering Katya's calling us to remember all "who are officially neglected and restricted from their rights (Middle Asian women icluded)" I think giving thanks for these little islands of peace we might find in this terrible storm is an obligation. Otherwise the fates will hear you, the fates will know when you're taking the mickey out of them. It's a scary world. This is a scary time.

Here is the secret I want
to give to you because
I give out secrets. I like you
and give the way the fates
give, soothingly,
smoothingly.
You knew you could
put honey in your mouth
to sweeten all this and
you did. You knew
you could read all this
and you did. The ego
says "i" and underneath that?
You knew the legend says
the goat moon marks
certain of us. Certain
of us like you. And
me. Marked. You knew
the story of the apple. Not
that apple but this apple.
You knew the song
I sing in these hills.
You sing it too. Softly.
No words. No tune. But
softly since its the fates
who say I must rise. You must
wait with a secret. This secret
song, song of the apple. This
apple and its promise. It is a
promise I want to talk to you
about. Bite hard and into
this promise I shall arrive.

Work Cited

Carson, Anne (trans). If Not, Winter: fragments of Sappho. New York: Knopf (2006)

It is nice to have amazing friends. Ekaterina Evseyeva has been sending me photos of her life in Sahka/Yakutsk, in the former Soviet Union. My poem does not do justice to her photography … but as they say, "a photograph is worth a thousand words."

Perhaps I best write a little faster.

Tell me that pigeons have it easy, my
dear, someone must. The sky is vast. I love
the sky, though I am pale. The antennae
of those apartments all rise up, they glove
the whole world in their messages. They shove
old God out of bed, they must, and I think
through this door lies Rome. It rises above
the clouds. You can see it all purple-pink
in the winter sky. Or Paris? The stink
of this life — sore, wet and smog — makes it tough
to tell. Pigeons know. They are my far link
to the beyond. And this door. It's enough
to know I can go. Rise on ruddy-gray
wings. Wild pink delight in a wild pink day.

My dear friend from Yakuts, Katya, sent me a new photograph she had taken. She called it "Beaurocracy au Bleu" and explained: It's my friend, not me, but I like the idea … if you feel like beaurocracy can be a devasatatibe thing, emotionless, empty …

But not all bureaucracy is terrifying. Someone in Sweden must be doing something right. This morning on NPR I found out Turkish author Orhan Pamuk had won the 2006 Nobel prize in literature. This is the same Pamuk who made headlines last year from speaking out against the Turkish government's denial it had orchestrated the genocide of over a million Armenians in 1915. Wikipedia has this to say:

In 2005, ultra-nationalist lawyers of two Turkish professional associations brought criminal charges against Pamuk … after the author made a statement regarding the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 … and the massacre of 30,000 Kurds in Anatolia. The charges were dropped on 22 January 2006. He has subsequently stated his intent was to draw attention to freedom of expression issues.

So yes, you are right Katya, some bureaucracies are devastating, emotionless and empty. It is as Pamuk stated, Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.

And though this sonnet is more on a personal level we can only hope that perhaps now more people will.

All night you are in love with some inner
chaos. The tension of an inner life
that will no longer be yours. Your spine's strife
and grief at keeping you erect. The blur
of your hands, fingernails, a deep hunger
you have never once eased. Refuse this touch.
Not by hands, the vapor of a kiss. Such
desire: O lips, O tongue, O Rapture,
is not for you. What drear bureaucracy
in bleak Heaven made passion a disease?
What fool man censored your passion's desperate
purpose? the red fig Eve dipped in honey?
juice drips on lips you will never taste; these
flurries, these needs, these screams from a corset.

My friend, Ekaterina Evseyeva, wrote to me recently with a very interesting idea for a literary project.

Ekaterina is a Sakha poet, photographer and scholar living up near the Arctic circle in Siberia. She asked if we could collaborate together; she would send me one of her outstanding photos and I would write a poem in response.

This is the first; the photo, Runaway Winter, is of her Ekaterina herself. Outside my window autumn is here, soon snow. From the photo I began thinking of winter less as half a year of dread ice and slush but rather as a friend one must put up with, even, perhaps, enjoy. The Romantic poet Samuel T. Coleridge begins his poem, Frost at Midnight with the lines, "The Frost performs its secret ministry …" I liked that idea. The only downside to befriending winter is that sooner or later winter leaves you. That would be sad. Poor, lonely winter! Poor, lonely me …

all the opium Coleridge took for pain/
pain that old dun horse/ horse at the salt lick/
lick of brackish winter/ winter remain
with me here/ here everything is panic/
panic remembers out beyond the creek/
creek bed full of snow/ snow on my tongue/ tongue
in your mouth/ mouth full of words/ words lovesick
with my craving … was it craving that flung
winter away? was it these words that stung?
a wasp on the ice marsh? was it my mouth
winter dread? the glimmer of warmth among
kisses? or was it panic from the south?
blizzard bound horse? Was it Coleridge's frost
winter left me for? Winter! I am lost —