THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS

We will have to carry them with us.

How can we ever gather?

I cannot tell you about

the burned soldier, our enemy.

How can we assemble?

If pluck what grew,

then fallen into scatter.

It is the seed of everything.

How can we ever gather?

How can we assemble?

The final whisper of a melting child.

How can I pick it up again?

How can we ever gather?

We will have to carry her with us.

If that is your mother dying

by the side of an everlasting road,

if that road is flagged with mothers,

how can we assemble?

The heaviness of my father and his dreams

How can we ever gather?

How can we assemble?

We will have to carry them with us.

We are not burdened with our dying

But with our murder. And who.

We will have to carry them with us.

How can we ever gather?

That harvest, our harvest.

How can we assemble?

We will fill you full of light.

We will have to carry them with us.

HUMMINGBIRD

How did this hummingbird

get into the house?

What a disaster!

to have my soul scratching at this

window pane.

Won’t someone let it out?

But heaven is free

of the consternation of struggles—

struggles ...

which is life  after all—and so

better to be stuck.

REVISION

Hummingbird

How did it get into the house?

No windows are open.

Someone must’ve

smuggled it in

while I was sleeping.

A hummingbird

breathless agitation

which only has eyes

for heaven.

or the cheap stand-in

of my garden.

What a disaster!

To have my soul

scratching at this

window pane.

Won’t someone let it out?

Heaven is free of the

consternation of struggle.

Life is not.  I whispered.

Better to be stuck.

But I open the louver.

On the death of Cesar Chavez 4/23/1993

Today is Cesar Chavez’s birthday. I met Cesar a couple of times as a teenager. I celebrate his influence on me as a person. I wrote this poem about Cesar four days after he died. The original is shaped like the UFW eagle. But it is too hard to do that layout here.

On the death of Cesar Chavez 4/23/1993

so how does this mean that

there is an end or that

anything is different?

We still have a promise to keep.

We still have work to do.

Our father who art finally

away from disaster, out of

the grip of that hand

that wants to shape

everything, to twist

everything, that hand that

crushes the flowers into

a lingering fragrance, and

that thinks to make men

into mud again.

I would like to tell you

that the children will be

happy and in love with life

again and in love with

themselves.

It is the last promise

I will make.

They will live.

On my blood.

And no hand will

cover their mouths

again, and the air

will be clean, and

their eyes will be open.

And their mouths

will be unstuck,

and the ears

unstopped.

I think I can make this

promise. What life would be

worth living unless

we can make this promise?

You can sleep now.

You can dream now.

But dreaming, you still

have work to do:

Will you dream us?

And we will leave the door open

on those hot evenings in the Valley,

and while we sleep, you can always

walk in again.

Pick up your things

“Man is indeed that creature who, if he sees an object on the floor and wants to see it on the table, is obliged to lift it.” 

Simone Weil, from “On Science, Necessity and the Love of God,” (1941).

Love is not a destination

but a direction

and an exhausting climb.

To be human is to lift whatever has fallen:

To pick up your things,

like your mother said, your father said,

Pick up your things!

They were only saying:

Be everything.

Move everything.

Be everything humanly possible.

Love is a direction and the energy

to move everything in that loving direction

and not to be astonished, frozen

because you are not there yet.

Do not be paralyzed by fear.

Don’t be anesthetized

by the ordinary poisons of the world.

The world is full of those darts

that they use

to put tigers to sleep.

If you are stuck,

your feet buried

up to the ankles,

to your knees,

Then lift them

Love is a direction. So love yourself

and others and the world.

Forgive what you can.

And lift your feet.

And when you see something

or someone who has fallen—

lift them.

These are your things.

Pick up your things!