PSALM 137

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IWZlye6Hao

On the willows, there
We hung up our lyres
For our captors there
Require
Of us songs
And our tormentor's mirth

Years after I converted to Judaism, I bought a cassette to hear one song: Godspell's "On the Willows".

Despite being stuck in a 1971 passion play about Jesus the song is the first four lines of Psalm 137

I am considering how this song is braided with memories of my father.

He took me to the production of Godspell in Shreveport at the Strand.  

I don't recall, but it may have still been rare for Blacks to sit in the orchestra level of the theatre.  One of the African-American actors saw us during intermission and waved to us from the stage.  My father sat silently beside me, commenting in the car later that the crucifixion scene wasn't as realistic as the ones that he saw as a student at Southern.  You can imagine a teenage me figuratively rolling my eyes at that.  

The lyricist of Godspell uses only the first four lines of the psalm.  By the end, the psalmist is longing to see the heads of Babylonian babies dashed against the rocks.  Godspell's Jesus would not sing those words, but you can bet that the real one living during Roman occupation knew them.  Galilee was a hotbed of the revolution that eventually led to the razing of the second Temple.

Later, much later I became Jewish, and I wondered at the irony of a song that sings -- I am so sad that I will never sing again.  I can imagine the arguments among Levites who sang and those who condemned the singing.  The Talmud wouldn't exist for generations.  But after 500 years, another Temple razing and another exile, you won't hear a tambourine or lyre in a traditional synagogue service.  

But there will be singing.

Later, much later I remember my father's stories of how difficult it was for Southern to obtain funding.  Southern was partially the result of the Morrill Act of 1890 that required former Confederate states to establish separate land-grant institutions for Black students or admit them to the established white land-grant schools.  The state wouldn't get federal money unless Black students were educated.  Immediately, the division of funds was an issue.  LSU proposed 64/36 split.  The Commissioner of Education pointed out that the colored population was almost 52 percent larger than the white population.  The split was changed to 60/40.  Money is an issue to this day.

My father said that funding was secured when the university president showed up at the Louisiana Board of Education with a gospel choir.  I can't find that in any book although there is plenty in "A Centennial history of Southern University and A&M College" about budget cuts that were reversed after negotiations. There is recorded history of the Fisk university choir touring and saving their school in 1871. They could not hang up their lyres even if their former captors were in the audience. 

Fisk is still there.  Southern is still there.  

We are all still singing. 

Despite our tormentors mirth.

You are frozen there
Emily
one foot on the muddy gate to the American city
one foot raised over brick laced into concrete
between buildings higher than you’ve ever seen
On foggy March mornings, women wearing starched cotton stride 
by you into work you would recognize
If I keep you poised there, I don’t have to imagine what happened:
the cotton dealer who misplaced his child’s favorite playmate;
the brothel owner that thought you a charming whimsy for his parlor;
the errand that crushed you beneath a carriage’s wheels;
the race along the levee that ended with a tumble into the river.
You can see that I am kin
I can think of so many horrors.
A gift, I’ll imagine one more:
the man that recognized you
hid you beneath his cloak
and took you to live among the maroons in the swamp across the river.
Stay there Emily, 
a moment longer
I only live ten miles and two hundred years away
Your father is coming for you.

It was my turn to
hide, William said.
The whistle blew

He did not find me

I think that means I won.

Two panels that I attended were poetry workshops.

• The Poet as Activist: On Seeing and Saving the Natural World


• Speculative Poetry Workshop

An early panel , the first was somewhat unfocused. However the presenters did note that while most literary poetry journals pay in copies, most SF magazines actually pay for poetry.  They gave the attendees the names of market lists.  Part of the problem was the focus on “the natural world”.   One participant asked about how to use poetry to reach mental patients and students in high school.  I immediately thought of Kalamu’s story circles.  The other note that I made in my little yellow tablet was the definition of “lune” poetry - a haiku styled poem with the 5-3-5 syllable count.

The Speculative Poetry workshop was interesting even though I got there a little late.  (It was murder trying to get from one wing of the convention center to another.)  I got there in time to be handed three words from three different canisters with the instruction to write a speculative poem using those 3 words.  I felt very happy with myself when I finished early, despite writing 3 drafts.  Someone in the front row was more productive.  She wrote  3 effective poems using her 3 words using her experience on a recent tour of San Antonio.

My three words were misty, interstellar medium, regent.  Go ahead. Try to write your own.

My poem

Waking to weariness,

I am the calf who stumbles

downwind to the wolf’s den.

Sweet welcome,

sweet rendering.

but on the other side

I’ll be the steaming rush of piss that marks

the boundary between alpha and beta.

In the morning, I’ll be top

dog, my teeth the best provider.

By afternoon, as rancher

my steel cheeks spit bullets

at wolf and coyote.

By evening, I’ll lie down as

the rancher’s cow and

the grass underfoot.

Before you dismiss me.

Think

Who am I tonight?

The rancher,

the calf,

the grass underfoot

or the wolf and the word

that will bring you down to earth.

Memory

And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him; for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying: 'God will surely remember you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.

I carried the bones of Joseph to Shechem
I am carrying them still--
the memory
of a loin cloth for raiment in prison;  the whisper
that the sheerest of linen makes
against parched skin even when
embroidered in gold thread.
I claim this land with his bones.
And exile too.
I will always have a place there.
My coat carries the colors of every
flag on earth; my dust
rides the wind.

                                          Bashert    

I’m awake, he posted.

Is anyone ever?  one replied.

Prove it, typed another.

Nihilist!  A graphic cry followed by exclamation.  

That reply arrived late in the morning during a coffee break

Someone’s big word for today.  :-)

Awake is a big word, someone ventured.  Full of potential.  

A female name accompanied by

the image of an arched foot stepping away in sand.

He traced the curve of it, the name and the foot, 

wondering if they 

could be a matched set.

Captain

Every river is the same river and
every sea is the same sea
So, he'll wait.
He'll wait until the Nile comes to him
raindrop by 
raindrop and as sweetly as
flesh calls
to flesh.