A Field of Blackbirds
Villages were falling one after the other. . .
National Public Radio, April 16, 1994
May 6, 1993
Yesterday on the television a small child was reunited with her mother. The mother, who was only 33, looked older than I am, though I am more than ten years older. She had been separated from her daughter for about six months, maybe even longer. Her husband was dead, killed in a Serb attack. The daughter was only five years old. The child had short hair, and it seemed, from the pictures on the television, that everyone in the world had lost the capacity to smile to feel joy, even to express relief. The mother fainted when she saw her child. During the time of separation the only communication the mother had received was a note from the Serbians saying that the child was alive and well in an orphanage. At the bottom of the brief note was the hand print of the child. On the television the mother recovered. She embraced the child, rocking and murmuring, with the child clutched in her arms. “My sunshine,” the reporter said she was saying,“my sunshine, my sunshine.” This is the same name my mother, now dead, used with me. I started to cry a little, but then I had a class to teach, so I stopped crying and turned off the television.
May 7, 1993
Learning the names of this war is like learning a new language. “Kosovo,”:Krajina,” “Vukovar,” “Tuzla,” “Screbenice,” “Kozara,” “Mostar.” I say the words over and over, a conjugation, a set of verb forms, actions unspeakable, even unknowable, which is why we must have the names, if nothing else, of the towns as they fall.
Tonight. The clips of a boy with his face blown away.
May 8, 1993
When my mother was dying I became, quite suddenly, afraid to travel across bridges. Crossing the vast Tappan Zee Bridge, that S curve over the Hudson that leads to western New York State, Ashbery’s holy land, where my mother lay dying, I would suddenly become convinced that the bridge would crumble beneath me, that I would drive into the water, that the car would blow up into a million pieces. I wanted to stop, right there in the middle of the bridge. I wanted to close my eyes and take my chances. I wanted to arrive at the other side without crossing the water. I gripped the steering wheel. And kept going.
Now I have terrible dreams. My lover is driving me across a bridge. The road crisscrosses the whole way like a braided bread, like a challah. Just as we are to get to the far side of the water he drives straight through the side of the bridge and we begin to fall through space. He takes my hand and says goodbye. I feel certain the situation is hopeless. But somehow I attach a rope to the bridge and grab one end and we swing down to safety, land somewhere, on a roof, in a living room, somewhere, and then we are alright.
April 16,1994
Tonight Gorazde is falling. And falling and falling and falling and falling
and falling.
October 29, 1995. New York Times. Front Page.
On the afternoon of July 10, soldiers of the Bosnian Serb army began storming Screbenice, a city of refuge created by the United Nations, where more than 40,000 people sought shelter from war. A United Nations officer in the town hunched over his computer and tapped out a desperate plea to his leaders in Geneva.
“Urgent, urgent, urgent . . . Will someone stop this immediately and save these people? Thousands of them are gathering around the hospital. Please help.”
Sky
1.
Without the first person or second, clouds in the sky. Without point of view. Clouds. Moving on the other side of the sky. The sky with its many moving parts. Destiny and shadow, the fall of Krajina, the machinery runs down. One side then the other. These are phrases, fragmentary. Years later this will matter. Raspberries and blueberries in a white bowl. Yes. Little home for which no name is possible. This will matter and the machinery runs down.
2.
Alive and alive. The text of the sky. You can call it anything you like. You can say what you say. A whisper. Tender you say. Words curl, Gorazde, pale hair on the page. This really happens. Now. In history.
The simplest things.
I do not know how
To say them.
3.
Slip of the tongue. Kiss. Do.
I. you.
Permit me
the entrance of the second person.
See.
And in the meanwhile
in the basement
all manner
of things going on..
4.
That you might make a list,
charmingly, of real
property
you are willing
to leave behind.
Leave, for god’s sake, your shoes
by the stairs, by the bed
little empty head.
Flapsock flying. This is not
a moment of crowning glory.
Oh, she said and he said and
all the people clapped.
5.
And the wind. And the wind
endlessly. And old sky
old friend
with its many moving parts
overhead.
And you without hesitation
moving the debt
of mountains. In deep.
But good. For sure.
This time.
And what matters. The fall.
Screbenice
Sarajevo, Kosovo.
Fragments of cities. Cities as names.
Clues or
Cries. Nothing matters.
Nothing but moving sky,
home,
who is in it.
White Room
This white room, with the small shelf,
in which something happens,
This empty room, its windows
high up, a little smudged, in daylight,
not anything you had in mind.
Here the nouns drove you away.
Here three candles
burned out, in rapid succession.
Here the hand of one
holding the hand of one.
Not what you had in mind.
And if desire has a name
perhaps it is “sunbonnet.”
Perhaps you hung
something on the hook
by the door. Pink hat
perhaps, or the keys
after locking the door.
And then the way
you treated your hands,
smoothing and smoothing
the lotion, long after
the fact. Little blue jar
you say. On a shelf
you say. Begin you say.
The room. Only. And
after all.
It was a slow time of year.
Before the mowing of lawns.
Before the lowing of cows.
You are not scheduled
for any appointments
in the barn. And still
going through the motions
with a certain animation.
Was there not something
to defy, alone, then, in those
days, in the dark kitchen?
The grandmother bows her head.
The genuine article before the noun.
And furthermore, she said,
you should have your face slapped
for taking such liberties,
such liberties with a personal
pronoun.
She, she she was not
the one, never the one.
He, he was the one,
Out on a limb, up
a tree, in the words, in
the dark, the light
room, the small shelf,
the white room.