I held you tightly so you covered my eyes
Blindside me from the sight of your voice
Lips moving softly as I tremble at their sound
I wanted you
Wrapped your head in my arms held it to my stomach
Cried while watching you smile-
We are posed
Here standing in levels
But I am still underneath you
Pulsing to the breath of your touch
Loudly to the sound of your name
If you could write me
You’d write wrong
Right before you
Say something I’ve said
How could you
Could you know-how
You could wait
Wait till you can
But then
You’d be too early
Early morning
I see you sleeping
Slowly breathing
A smile slipped
Across your face
But who could talk
While tangled
The past two years have been filled with love and loss among countless others emotions and events. There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of trial and tribulation. Throughout the isolation, the arts have been an escape, even if I took a break from participating in the performing arts myself. But as much as I have always loved the arts, they wouldn’t be as monumental in my life without the influence of other people.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I took some time to reflect about where I am in life and what I am grateful for. Looking back at the recent U-M Women’s Glee concert, I considered how great it felt to be there in person and have a live audience, even if the evening did include masks. Yet, despite reminiscing over the semester’s music-making and energy from the crowd, I couldn’t help but feel a pang in my chest when I remembered one person wasn’t there.
My grandmother was always a huge part of my life. She lived less than a ten-minute drive away and came over several times a week. Among the million memories or character traits I could share, when it came to the arts, she was my biggest support system. She was at every choir concert, theatre performance, and piano recital. In fact, I don’t know if I would have continued taking piano lessons throughout my childhood without her. Without fail, she always asked me to “play her a song” when she visited. I did so, though oftentimes more begrudgingly than not (I used to hate playing for other people, even my own loved ones).
When it came to college and I no longer kept up with the piano, my grandmother came to my choral performances. Most notably, she came to my RC Singers and U-M Women’s Glee Club concerts. Below is a picture of me and my grandmother after a glee concert, the last one “pre-COVID.”
While I could give a lot of credit to personal interest, my participation in the arts wouldn’t be what it is without the support of loved ones behind me. I’m thankful for all the people who encourage me in my writing, music-making, or other art endeavors. I thank my parents for giving me the opportunity to take piano lessons, coming to my choir concerts, and even enrolling me in ballet, even if I only did it for one year when I was eight. I thank my sister for giving me a paint set for Christmas, taking me to concerts/musicals, and driving from Ohio just to see my performances. I thank my family abroad for always reading my writing and sharing their thoughts, even if they are half a world away.
As much as I disliked playing the piano for other people when I was a child, the support of my parents and grandmother at recitals always meant the world to me. These days, I am thankful for the support of other loved ones as well, like friends, cousins, aunts, and uncles. While my grandmother might not have been in the audience at my last glee concert, these people were, along with my parents, siblings, and adorable three-year-old nephew. I’m also grateful to all the people who couldn’t be at Hill Auditorium but cheered me on from home or in their own way.
It’s been over a year since I lost my grandmother to COVID-19. The dreams, grief, and guilt still haven’t gone away. There are so many things I wish I could say, sing, or play for her, but I’ll continue to honor her memory in my heart as I participate in the arts, just as she would’ve wanted me to. And although Grandma isn’t around anymore, I have a lot of friends and family members who continue to support me. In a way, her love for me and the arts still shines through. And that’s something to be grateful for.
[To read an introduction to this column, please see the first paragraph of the initial post here]
This week I am featuring the poet Swidala Swami from India. She is a varied writer, also working in fiction and children’s literature. Her work ranges in themes, but seems to have particular focus on love and loss. The two poems I selected to show today use these themes well, and perhaps in unexpected ways.
[To read an introduction to this column, please see the first paragraph of the previous post here]
This week I would like to share a poem I found recently from the Nigerian poet Gbenga Adesina. The following poem I discovered in the Fall 2020 issue of Narrative magazine. It is titled “Across the Sea: A Sequence”:
Across the Sea: A Sequence
Gbenga Adesina
1.
Across the Sea
The bottom of the sea is cruel. — Hart Crane.
i
On the sea, your prayer is not to the whorl scarf
of waves. Your prayer is to the fitful sleep of the dead.
Look at them, their bodies curve darkly without intention
and arrow down into the water. What do you call a body
of water made of death and silence? The sea murmurs
on the pages of this book. There are bones buried in the water
under these lines. Do you hear them, do you smell them?
ii
In the panic of drowning, there are hands lifting babies
up in the air, out of the water, for breath. A chorus
of still pictures brought this news to me, to us. Because we do
not see the bodies sinking, because we do not see their mouths
already touching water, the hands lifting up the babies look almost
ordinary. Like the Greeks lifting their newborns unto the sky.
What is the failure of dead? That they sink?
Or that they sink with what is in their hands?
The children of God are upon frightened waters,
And God being hunger, God being the secret grief of salt
moves among his people and does not spare them.
The children of God are upon frightened waters.
iii
There is a child whose protest is of eyes.
She has crossed the water with her mother,
they are shivering, waiting for her father, two days now, they are
waiting,
shivering for a father the mother knows would never arrive.
The mother holds the child, she says to her, gently:
“It’s a brief death. Your father has gone on a brief death.
He’ll soon be back.”
v
A man is bent on his knees, wailing at the waters.
He slaps his hand on the wet sand and rough-cut stones
the way one might fight a brother.
He grabs the shirt of the sand as though they are in a tussle.
The stones here carry the island’s low cry inside them.
A landlocked grief. They say the man was a newlywed.
Now his vows are inside the water.
He claws at the sand. He wails: “Ocean,
you owe me a body. Ocean, give me back my lover.”
vi
Think of the boats. The timber comes from Egypt.
They are cut into diagonals and made pretty. They
are polished by hands. Their saplings are watered by the Nile.
The White Nile flows through Khartoum
before it puts its teeth into the Mediterranean.
The waters and the trees eat bodies.
The children of God are upon frightened waters,
And God being hunger, God being the secret grief of salt
moves among his people and does not spare them.
The children of God are upon frightened waters.
2.
Coma
The silence is a prairie country. The silence
is the silence of hospital sheets.
The silence is of IV tubes, veins, quiet siren of ghosts.
The silence is the silence of what
is dappled invisibly by a body
that is no longer human but not yet a ghost. The silence in your
body has lodged in my throat.
Silence, can you hear me? The silence is of lime,
and kraal stones. The silence is not shadow
but the light of a body buried under a mound of rough stones.
The silence is the silence
of hands. Hands, wire-vine hands, can you hear me?
The silence is the silence of broken ribs.
The silence is the silence of the head,
shorn and shaven. The silence is silence of a bandage wrapped
tight around what is sunken, what is fallen in the gait of the head.
Head,
can you hear me?
The silence is silence of blood,
seething through filament of bandage.
Blood, can you hear me?
Father, blood, Father can you hear me?
I have read this poem multiple times and every time I discover something new about it. Each section is a separate scene, but they are all connected by themes of water, death, and the struggle for connection and survival. The language, images, rhythm, line breaks, and everything is so striking to me, by the end I’m left speechless. What do you see in it? I would love to read your thoughts in the comments below!
In light of Valentine’s Day approaching, (cue groans..groans that are all coming from me…) I would like to share one of my beloved poems that I wrote during my Sophomore year of college in a poetry class. It’s called The Love Doctor.
The Love Doctor
Let me tell you what I think.
I think this thing they call love,
it’s bullshit.
We women do all this work to get a man’s attention —
hair soft as cotton candy
nails clean with girlish pinks and reds always prim
body right, curves that round the world —
Oh, and don’t forget a personality, we must have a little of that.
Which one should you be today?
The loving girlfriend that gives him massages,
hot meals, alone time for him to be a man?
So he can watch the same shot
being made by the same person on TV,
or so he can criticize that girl’s physique
like it really is that thought provoking.
Or should you be the girlfriend that’s —
oh wait
he doesn’t want you to be anyone else.
That’s all there is to it with love.
I’m telling you, when a man finds out that you
have needs, complaints, wants, dreams, feelings, tears—
They deny ever knowing you,
like a grain of dreary dust they stepped on,
walking away from a deserted beach
holding another woman’s hand.
My advice honey,
the next time you hear someone say the word love,
tell ’em to come see me.
