Yusef Komunyakaa

A poet stands on the steps of the great cathedral,
wondering if he has been a coward in hard times.
He traveled east, north, south, & seven directions
of the west. When he first arrived on the other side
of the sea, before he fell into the flung-open arms
of a long romance, the lemon trees were in bloom.

After a year, poised on the rift of a purple haze,
he forgot all the questions he brought with him.
Couldn’t he see the tear gas drifting over Ohio
as flower children danced to Jefferson Airplane?
Will he ever write a sonnet dedicated to the memory
of four girls dynamited in a Birmingham church?

Standing in the cathedral again, in the midst
of what first calibrated his tongue—gold icons
& hidden jaguars etched into the high beams —
he remembers an emanation almost forgotten.
He can’t stop counting dead heroes who lived in his head,
sultry refrains that kept him alive in the country of clouds.

Underneath the granite floor where he stands
loom the stone buttresses of an ancient temple.
When he was a boy, with his head bowed
close to the scarred floor, he could hear voices
rising from below, their old lingua franca
binding with his. How could he forget?

The moon temple ghosts, swinging on heavy doors.

They ride rabid dogs in the alleys of ill repute.

They decipher the language of crows at dawn

in ancient trees, the blueness of a god’s skin.

They tiptoe power lines, rope bridges around the city.

They throw stones at the ambassador’s sedan.

When afternoon prayers begin, they grown silent,

Lying in each other’s arms, dreaming of clemency.

The monkeys are no rounding up street boys.

At least, at first, it seems this is true, but in no time

The boys learn to single out a monkey in the throng

& wrestle him to the ground. He may try to bite

& to scratch, to howl, & cry ceremoniously, to plead

with the one word he knows, but then the fight

goes out of him when the rest of his great clean

returns to jabbering & the sacred picking of lice.

The boys zap him with a small laser gun.

A garnet of mute bells is tossed into the dust,

& chants go aeons back to the beginning & die.

The fearless illumination goes out of his eyes.

The boys tag him. He rises to wander freely.

As naked unholiness crawls into the night,

they’re wrestled one by one to the ground

& castrated for the music of coins jangling in a pocket.

These frantic blooms can hold their own

when it comes to metaphor & God.

Take any name or shade of irony, any flowery

indifference or stolen gratitude, & our eyes,

good or bad, still run up to this hue.

Take this woman sitting beside me,

a descendant of Hungarian Gypsies

born to teach horses to dance & eat sugar

from her hand, does she know beauty

couldn’t have protected her, that a poppy

tucked in her hair couldn’t have saved her

from those German storm troopers?

This frightens me. I see eyes peeping

through narrow slats of cattle cars

hurrying toward forever. I see “Jude”

& “Star of David” scribbled across a depot,

but she says, That’s the name of a soccer team,

baby. Red climbs the hills & descends,

hurrying out to the edge of a perfect view,

& then another, between white & violet.

It is a skirt or cape flung to the ground.

It is old denial worked into the soil.

It is a hungry new vanity that rises

& then runs up to our bleating train.

I am a black man, a poet, a bohemian,

& there isn’t a road my mind doesn’t travel.

I also have my cheap, one-way ticket

to Auschwitz & know of no street or footpath

death hasn’t taken. The poppies rush ahead,

up to a cardinal singing on barbed wire.

We talked about Baroness Pannonica

driving her Silver Pigeon to the Five Spot

to chauffeur Monk home. I was happy

not to talk football, the inventory of skulls

in a cave in Somalia, the democratic vistas

of the Cedar Tavern, or about Spinoza.

We were saying how the legs go first

& then from the eyes mystery is stolen.

I said how much I miss Bill Matthews,

that sometimes at the Village Vanguard,

Fez, or Small’s, especially when some cat

steals a riff out of Prez’s left back pocket,

I hear his Cincinnati laugh. Then our gaze

snagged on a green dress shifting the light.

If you’d asked me, I couldn’t have said why

I knew jasmine from the silence of Egypt,

or how water lives only to remember fire.

As we walked out of the sanctuary of garlic,

chive, onion, mushroom, & peppery dough,

we agreed Rahsaan could see rhythm

when he blew wounded cries of night hawks

at daybreak. The heat of the pizza parlor

followed us to the corner, & two steps later

I remembered the scent of loneliness

in my coat left draped over the chair.

I had fallen in love with its cut,

how it made me walk straighter.

When I passed the young James Dean

coming out the door with my blue-gray coat

balled up in his arms, I didn’t stop him.

I don’t know why. I just stood there

at the table. But, David, years after

I circled the globe, I’m still ashamed

of memories that make me American

as music made of harmony & malice.

I am a scrappy old lion

who’s wandered into a Christian square

quavering with centuries of forged bells.

The cobblestones make my feet ache.

I walk big-shouldered, my head raised

proudly. I smell the blood of a king.

The citizens can only see a minotaur in a maze.

I know more than a lion should know.

My roar goes back to the Serengeti,

to when a savannah was craggy ice,

but now it only frightens pigeons from a city stoop.

They believe they know my brain’s contours & grammar.

Don’t ask me how I know the signs engraved

on a sundial, the secret icons behind a gaze.

I wish their crimes hadn’t followed me here.

I can hear their applause in the dusty citadel.

I know what it took to master the serpent

& wheel, the crossbow & spinal tap.

Once, I was a leopard beside a stone gate.

I am a riddle to be unraveled. I am not

& I am. When their eyes are on me

I become whatever is judged badly.

I circle the park. Hunger shapes

my keen sense of smell, a lifetime ahead.

They will follow my paw prints

till they’re lost in snow at dusk.

If I walk in circles, I hide from my shadow.

They plot stars to know where to find me.

I am a prodigal bird perched on the peak

of a guardhouse. I have a message

for Fate. The sunlight has shown me

the guns, & their beautiful sons are deadly.