I have read this poem many times (I have the collection it is part of, thanks to Jody), and each time it gives me chills -- such darknesses that can bring fear, especially to a parent's heart, and yet -- the hope, the beauty of the hope . . . Thanks to Jody for the poem and to Mr. Wilson for his excellent commentary.
I thought this poem was lovely, and sounds beautiful both in inner and outer ears. But I'm sorry, its meaning -- what the poem believes -- does not reach me. I am godless, live in a godless world, whose consequences we don't yet know. On Good Friday, the American president renamed Easter Sunday as "Transgender Day of Visibility". What if it's true, that from here the path to belief will be nasty, brutish and long.
Easter without
They wanted a god meant for man’s eyes
that they could watch me die on the cross of matter:
I have read this poem many times (I have the collection it is part of, thanks to Jody), and each time it gives me chills -- such darknesses that can bring fear, especially to a parent's heart, and yet -- the hope, the beauty of the hope . . . Thanks to Jody for the poem and to Mr. Wilson for his excellent commentary.
I thought this poem was lovely, and sounds beautiful both in inner and outer ears. But I'm sorry, its meaning -- what the poem believes -- does not reach me. I am godless, live in a godless world, whose consequences we don't yet know. On Good Friday, the American president renamed Easter Sunday as "Transgender Day of Visibility". What if it's true, that from here the path to belief will be nasty, brutish and long.
Easter without
They wanted a god meant for man’s eyes
that they could watch me die on the cross of matter:
where only air is what’s left of the elements
because fire and water are quenched;
when earth is no more than a falling stone
whose sun must dissolve in the sea;
all they have is just as unknowable
as the first question ever asked of nature.
Yet each year at this time, that set by the moon,
they still claim they come to see me dying,
like my father died, out on the edge of town,
he who taught me how only I stand alone.
Some want me to come and settle their debts,
some talk of my return. That keeps them waiting!
Maybe they’ll find some kind of mind that remains
when all the old names are forgotten and gone.
But all I do is tell the old story ... so,
come stay with me, stay, die in wonder.
Is it in the blood or is it just more blood?