Craft [The first great poet]

By Quan Barry
The   first    great    poet  of
the  crisis  the   one  whose
generation   was  left  as  if
firebombed     though      if
you    look     back   at    the
seminal    work    you   will
see  that only a  handful of
 
of   the   poems    explicitly

touch   on   that  dark time

the    blood    filling     with

virulence    and   the  night

always          black         and
spangled   with  stars  says

when           faced         with
 
difficult      material      the

poet       should          begin
obliquely      creeping     in

from   the   edge  a  square

of         light             moving
imperceptibly   across  the
floor as    the earth    turns
 
and   so   I   will   tell    you

that  ever  since  I saw  the

footage           of              the
journalists   hiding  in  the
attic      the    rope    ladder
pulled     up     after    them
only     the       one       with
 
foreign   papers    left     to
stand   her   ground  down
below   the   journalist    at
first     calmly    sitting   on
the      couch      but     then
huddling  in  a   cabinet  as
the     soldiers    enter    the
 
apartment     next       door,
the   cries   of   the  mother
floating       through       the
wall       ib’ni       ib’ni     the
language     ancient       like
something       whetted   on
stone     the   way   I   image
 
language      would        have
sounded     in     the  broken
mouth    of     King      David
Absalom        Absalom    the
man-child       hanging     by
the    shining    black   noose
of     his     own    hair  in the
 
fragrant         woods           of
Ephraim       ib’ni           ib’ni
next    door    the   sound  of

a    body      being     dragged

from     the    apartment    as

his            mother           wails
into      the        dark        how
 
many     mothers   and   how

many     sons    dragged   out

into    a       night     spangled

with             stars          where
everything    is  a   metaphor
for      virulence      my     son
my   son   and   ever  since  I
 
saw    a   clip  of the   footage
the       foreign        journalist
managed   to    smuggle   out
of   the  country   images   of
the        journalist       herself
hiding   in   a   space   meant
for   buckets   and   rags    as
 
next     door    the     soldiers

drag    away   a   young   boy

please     hear     it   again   a

child    of    no    more   than

twelve         his        mother’s
lamentations             forever
seared   in    the    blood   of
 
this    thing   I   call  my  life
but     really     what     is    it
what   is   this  light  I   hold
so   dear  it  wants   to move
imperceptibly    across   the
floor    as   the   earth   turns
so     as   not     to      become
 
too       aware      of      itself?

Copyright Credit: Quan Barry, "craft [The first great poet]" from loose strife.  Copyright © 2015 by Quan Barry.  All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: loose strife (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)