Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DESCENDANT OF SOLOMON AND THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, by CLARENCE MAJOR Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Yellow flowers, yellow flowers | ||||||||
Yellow flowers, yellow flowers. Skim milk, honeybees and skim milk. Smell of ponderosa leaves. None of these images slap their way into your sleep. There: brown heads busted open in an ocean of sunlight. Sailing around in a lazy circle, bloated blackflies are sucked to stink of decaying flesh. This and every night in your sleep, this image, over and over, as you wake to dying, bloody dying, seeing archangels weeping and stepping from your ancient triptych, tripping over bodies beside the collapsed wall of your ruined basilica. And your murals and memory too are ruined. In your nightmare, where else is there to go this morning -- through which door? I see you squatting under flying bullets and plunging bayonets. Bloated blackflies and you half-remember what you were told: everyone is promised more. Yellow flowers, smell of yellow flowers -- in the midst of spring garbage. You, a brown man, full of trust, shaking in the shade, patient in the long shadows of Zagwa kings. Do you find humility as you sweep the leaves? You sweep pine needles under trees in this my strange land. What else is there to do here but sweep up somebody's dust? And maybe know the taste of mint, crinkle of money, sound of larks. But here even, a brown man like you, from your homeland, in fact, just shot through the head this morning jogging with a white woman in the park across the street from his apartment. Can you make sense of this craziness? In your dark room, you're lucky to wake from the gray nightmare of starvation, lucky still to possess power of taste, power of touch. And so am I. Lucky you to know what you know. Over in your homeland your ancient manuscript, illuminated with colors still true, manuscript of the fourth century (before the birth of Christ) -- on a Judaic altar (according to your sister) -- has not yet been pissed on nor shot full of holes. And your mother hasn't been strung up with a rope and your sister is still a virgin. See, a brown man like you, framed like a pope in a doorframe of display-light, understands better than we how there is no sure plan that anybody can surely depend on. And I shake your brown hand with my own and the ocean is smaller. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SYNCOPATED CAKEWALK by CLARENCE MAJOR REVELATION AT CAP FERRAT by CLARENCE MAJOR SAND FLESH AND SKY by CLARENCE MAJOR A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR AGING TOGETHER by CLARENCE MAJOR AT THE ZOO IN SPAIN by CLARENCE MAJOR ATELIER CEZANNE by CLARENCE MAJOR BALLROOM DARK by CLARENCE MAJOR |
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