more thoughts on "mercy"

the poem i posted the other day, "mercy," has kept spinning around in my head, stirring up conversations with several folks, and so i want to keep talking about it here, despite my claim that i wouldn't. and this isn't going to be coherent, perhaps, because it's brought up a lot of enormous questions -- but i'll do my best.

someone brought to my attention that the poem could be read very differently than i read it: that the last line, "And the Lord sent rain," could be construed as a sarcastic response to the situation of the poem, as a dismissal of or a slam on religion or faith -- that the Lord's "response" is horribly inadequate, much too late, far too minimal for the grief of the man in the poem. and i can see that now; i can see the poem through a different lens, and it's caused me to think and rethink what that tiny poem might mean (though a poem should not mean but be, etc.) and what the tone and meaning of the last line might be.

and so, i want to tell a story first, and then rethink the poem (and my response) through that story.

when i was seven years old, i was playing alone in my bedroom. we got a phone call; shortly after my mom hung up the phone, she came into my room. she had gotten the news that a boy my age, a boy in my class, had just died. his name was andy. he had bright blonde hair, as i remember, and he was funny -- the kind of kid teachers call "sweet." his older brother had been driving a forklift; andy asked him if he could have a ride. he fell off the forklift. i don't remember many of the details now, beyond those basics, but i remember thinking, almost immediately, "will i die soon, too?" i don't remember if i asked out loud, or just thought it. i thought, too, about his brother, how i didn't know if i could stand that kind of guilt living with me for the rest of my life. and the rest of his family, i thought about them; i liked his mom, and i liked his mom's name.

later, i remember -- at least, i think i remember (always the difficulty with memory) -- we went to see andy's family. i don't remember if it was the funeral, or the wake, or just a gathering of folks from our church. i remember wandering around between people's knees. i remember the light was dimmed. and i remember someone saying, very quietly, that andy's death had made his father angry at God -- that he was shaking his fist at the sky. and i remember thinking that seemed wrong, because i didn't know you could be mad at God, i didn't think it was possible. and then i thought, i think i would be, too. and the questions started: why would God take away a seven-year-old? why would he want to wreck a family that way? what would happen to my family? why didn't it happen to my family? what kind of justice is this; what kind of justice is there in the world at all?

these aren't new thoughts, of course; why bad things happen to good people, why bad things happen at all, is maybe one of the most-asked, most-unsolvable questions of being human. there are books and books written on the "problem of suffering," and there are thousands of sermons about it, i'm sure, but i don't know that anyone finds an answer, ever. even the answer that "evil is in the world" doesn't really work here -- andy wasn't an evil kid, his family wasn't. and i don't like the "test of your faith" theory, either -- Job, for example, never gets an answer to why his entire life has been stripped away; he wasn't an evil man at all; and he never gets a response from God about why he'd been tested, if that's what it was.

it seems to me that the poem asks this same question in its various forms -- where was the Lord when the house was burning? where was the Lord when the drought went on for so long? why does the rain come only after it isn't needed? why were two children taken away? what kind of justice is that? is there justice at all in the world? is God looking on at all? and so, reading that last line as a kind of question, a "shaking the fist at the sky," seems not like a slam, but rather a human response to tragedy -- a foundation has been shaken, a lot has been lost, and there's no explanation that's adequate for why someone would have to lose so much.

i also find it to be one response to those who would say that the fire is punishment for the man -- the same kind of idea that was circulated after katrina: that God was "cleansing" the city with the hurricane. which is an idea that makes me want to swear and pull out my hair and scream with its kind of horrible religiosity, false piety, and misconstructed notion of faith or the divine or God's role in the world. i don't think God sends tragedy as punishment, and i don't think God sends rain or money or success or whatever as reward (see also: my sincere loathing for books that make the claim that if you pray hard enough and faithfully enough, god will send you financial reward). andy's family didn't "deserve" to lose their son. people in new orleans didn't deserve to lose their families, their homes, their city. people closer to me, in nappannee, who were just recently devastated by a tornado, are some of the most faithful (in religious terms) folks i've met -- and i think anyone would be hard-put to find an answer to why so many of them lost their homes and still haven't managed to get any funding to rebuild. the last line of the poem does, then, i suppose, call into question that kind of thinking -- that the Lord is somehow doling out punishment and reward. and i also (to say it again, as i'm trying to get this complicated answer under control) think it's the sincerest human response to tragedy i've heard -- we're looking and looking and searching and searching for reasons, and we don't get answers. we get rain. really, God? rain? that's all you've got?

however, i do think it's more complex than that, too; i find the last line of the poem to be both question and answer, both doubt and relief. it's not just a slap in the face to religion -- though losing two children seems to warrant plenty of doubt -- because there is still some faith, some answer, some kindness in the midst of the horror. maybe i find comfort in the last line of that poem because, at least, there is a presence of God, a possibility of a God who is listening, who is sympathizing. if i look at the poem not as a literal reconstruction of events (which i do often because of its directness and its clarity) but instead as layered and also artfully done, then rain (as a symbol, as a metaphor) becomes a representation of renewal, of the possibility of new growth and revival, of a "quenching" of the thirst for answers, for reasons, and as a balancing out of the tragedy and suffering in the first lines. that may be too easy, too much of a "god cries with you" or "pastoral sympathy" answer -- i don't know. but a drought and a fire can certainly be seen as representative of suffering, doubt, pain, "going without," and loss -- and so rain becomes reprieve, healing, answer, return, and "going with." there is a sense in that line, for me, that God has not abandoned this person, though all signs previous may be read as pointing to the contrary. at the end of Job, while Job gets no answers, he does get the presence of God, the reassurance that God is still there, and that may be all we ever get to know.

i take the line, then, as a very complex response in very simple words -- because i don't think there is an easy answer for anyone who has lost anyone. giving up on faith wholly is a possibility, of course, but perhaps we are not abandoned, even at the worst moments -- "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" but sticking to faith without question, without doubt -- and saying simply or dismissively that "God has 'his' reasons" -- is deeply unsatisfying, lacking in compassion or honesty or both, and not acknowledging the complexity of the world we live in. why andy died is not clear to anyone, to this day. why i've lost other people in my life -- even if they were seventy or eighty years old -- is not clear to me. i don't know that we ever know "why," and i think we know that any reasons we come up with are inadequate. and so it's all we can do to hang on; it's all we can do to say "i don't understand, and while i'll keep trying to understand, i'll also keep trying to believe."

and maybe, while the loss always burns, the Lord is still sending rain.

"mercy"

i'm having a little difficulty getting my brain to kick into gear these spring break days -- whenever i try, i get the sound my neighbor's car made all morning: eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-EEEEEEE. cough, splutter, die.

but: i spent a lovely afternoon with my friend nancy, and she pulled out a book she'd recently found. and i recognized it as one i have had for several years and haven't gone back to in much too long. we both love this poem so much -- and it really does speak for itself. there's no need to say much more about religion, spirituality, suffering, grief -- this poem does it all in such a short space. i am stunned by it, every time i read it.


Mercy

~ Jo McDougall

The night after his two children burned
in a frame house in a searing drought,
the man, the neighbors said,
wandered through his yard
murmuring "Lord have mercy."
And the Lord sent rain.


(published in Dirt by Jo McDougall, Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2001).

"april, come she will"

several folks in the last few days have kvetched, bemoaned, and sighed with me over the fact that, in indiana, march is the month of "almost-spring." it's a month of spring teases.

even garrison keillor brought it up in one of his recent shows -- that we get so close, the wind has lost its bite, we see the sun, the sun! -- and then we look out the window the next day to find snow.

some folks are okay with this. i say: winter is no good for anyone, unless you're a bear.

i say: winter is no good, no matter how much zoloft you're on.

a colleague came into my office today to say that one of her friends in kansas city reports that there are crocuses appearing there. we are a month behind kansas city in the changing of seasons. there is hope, and then there is waiting. they can co-exist, but i am tired of the waiting.

i finally heard birds as i woke up this morning, and while they were those big, scary crows with big, menacing black beaks, they were birds. and i was grateful.

and it's better than finding a bird in my house when i get home in the evening, a bird that likely got in (this is the best hypothesis i've heard for how it got in -- thanks, dad) through the furnace chimney. and flapped around my head, dive-bombing me in the kitchen, then making a cozy little nest out of my heap of scarves in the closet. and finally made his way out after i flung both doors open and hid in the bedroom with my cat, who would much rather have gone back out to start another game of "chase the bird until it hates you."

this poem, then, i dedicate to the bird who may finally be getting warmer, and so will not need my chimney anymore, and to surviving (almost) another gray indiana winter.


Snowdrops

~ Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring --

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

(published in: Claiming the Spirit Within, ed. Marilyn Sewell, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.)

p.s. i could just live in her line breaks in this poem: "survive, expect, feel, body, remembering, again, light, spring, again, joy, world." even just those words are music, climactic, hopeful!

"what is it i send to auction?"

more thoughts, now that i've been away from the poem (below) for a little bit:

the phrase "bad girl" comes up more than once in the poem, and it's because the horse is the speaker's "bad girl" that she's sent away. and because the speaker is hesitating over sending her away, and because i'm always suspicious of the words "bad girl" (because of the several stereotypes that they conjure, and because they're oft applied to "keep her in line"), i started thinking: the horse is a bad girl because... she's untamed? because she refuses to be tamed? refuses to be tethered, tied down, reined in? because she refuses to give up the wildness -- the "temper," the anger, the -- let's be frank, those last few lines ask us to be -- sexuality? while the speaker does not explain what made her a "bad girl," it does seem quite possible that the wildness, the anger, the sexuality that she sees in the horse is what she also saw in herself, and perhaps her mother saw in her. after all, the speaker compares herself to -- and conflates herself with, in some lines -- the horse, after being beaten: they were both indomitable, undefeated, resilient, or at least defiant.

and so i'm thinking, again, of resistance, but this time, i'm thinking more of resistance against the general and oft-used definitions of "good girl" -- not angry, not loud, not boisterous, not opinionated. and i'm thinking especially of feminist theology and feminist thinking in general, which works to explain that our anger can be our push to work for change -- much of our best work is done when we're livid about the state of things. of course, you can't stay angry all the time.

but some of the time: it ain't all bad. and some of the time, it shouldn't be auctioned off.

and enough from me on this one. i'm fairly certain it's best just to read the poem. :)

this poem, "Sending the Mare to Auction," strikes several chords with me today, and the more i read it, the more i love it. it's not because it's in any way connected to my literal experience (for example, i can't ride a horse to save my life, unless the horse is from one of those "rent-a-ride" places in which the horses plod in a single file line up a hill and -- excitement! -- back down).

but there's something about the energy, the defiant, pure, red-hot blood energy, that the speaker remembers in herself when she was younger: "one day vicious, indomitable, the next/crying at the gate...". that energy to resist, to reject, whatever is limiting, damaging, is nearly tangible in the poem. these lines, too, aren't entirely clear -- do they apply to the speaker, the horse, or both? the raw animal energy seems very present in both the descriptions of the mare and of the speaker herself when she was younger -- and it's as though the speaker mourns it even as she recognizes its destructive potential. and when she's sending the mare to auction, well -- "what is it I send to auction?" how much of that energy and drive and fierceness do we lose?

it's not that i'm feeling old and creaky these days (though, in some ways, i am, and i'm generally cranky), but that i've been very grateful lately to lend my energy to projects that work to make the world a better place for someone -- students, this community, the women who've been hurt or abused, the local environment. but i'm also remembering when i was much bolder, when i fought harder for change in institutions, when i worked hard to write about, speak about, create discussions about what i saw that needed changing -- and then to see that change take place.

in the class that i'm teaching, we've been thinking a lot in class about how to use this kind of energy, this forcefulness, this fierce conviction -- and if it could lead to destructive or positive ends. i'm thinking especially of an essay we read recently by Carter Heyward, "Sexuality, Love, and Justice," in which she writes about creating love and justice in our religious, educational, business, and social structures, and how difficult it can be to create that kind of change: "To challenge these assumptions is, in some very real sense, to go mad."

and while i don't advocate crazy all the time, i like the kind of crazy and the kind of energy that fights injustice, that creates hope, that reclaims humanity for all folks, that understands that, as Heyward writes, "loving is always a revolutionary act."

i recognize that i'm on a bit of a soapbox here, and so i'll step down, so as to let the poem take the spotlight, as it does a far better job of illuminating these complexities.

and in the meantime, here's to challenging assumptions, to making change, to "going mad."


Sending the Mare to Auction

~ Jana Harris

choosing the gelding, younger, more placid
I remember my mother chose my brother

over me for that reason, today I am
packing my bad girl off to auction,

the whites of her eyes, red, the vet's
hypnotic voice, temper, he says, such

a temper, but her loveliness outweighs
everything, the shape of her head,

the neck arch, I think of Isak Dinesen
leaving Africa -- "these horses!" she cried

in goodbye -- my first mare the one I should
have had as a girl when I was bolder,

one day vicious, indomitable, the next
crying at the gate, already I've forgotten

she bit me with fury, with her hind legs
struck me down, that day I took a crop,

beat her until I could no longer raise
my arm, the look in that mare's eyes said

it made no difference, there was no way to
make this bad girl good, when she struck me

across the face, was that the look my mother
saw in me? lovely thing, the dreams I had

for her, I am shipping her off the way
my mother did me, her black tail flowing

in my dreams, now I wait for the van,
she waits -- little clock -- by the fence

haunches spread, the stallion watches her
tail cocked, tart, sweating from head to hoof

flesh hot as stove burners, selling this mare
what is it I send to auction?

(published in Claiming the Spirit Within, ed. Marilyn Sewell, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).

postcards from indiana

long, long ago, i wrote a poem that seems suitable, just now, for the beginning of a blog. i don't really know the ins and outs of blogging, nor do i know exactly how "funny" or "relevant" or "engaging" works on a blog. but i do know that i used to, am, and want to continue writing poems, and i figure this kind of a thing -- reading poems, seeking out poems, passing along poems to you that you might like -- might be the way to continue that trend.

i'm also a little weary of the analysis of everything, the questioning of value, the evaluation of it all -- what grade do i get for this? am i going to get a ticket for parking here? what's that in my teeth? did they notice? that song -- is it horrid, poppy, beautiful, sappy? wait, he wrote about pigeons? why did he write about pigeons? what's at stake in this poem/novel/letter? do we need to know more about the narrator? is the narrator reliable? how much whiskey does the narrator drink? did he mean what he said? did she define her terms? does she love him enough? what does it mean to love someone enough?

i'm guessing this blog, and this whole post, is partly inspired by jack ridl's recent post about grading, evaluation, and what happens when you lift that burden from folks' shoulders -- what sorts of doors open, what windows, what light comes in. i'm in need of a little light. and i'm in need of a little celebration of a good bunch of poems. it might get schmaltzy, sappy -- that's what i do best. (read: he wrote about pigeons because he loves pigeons, their feathers, their bewildered eyes.) it might get sarcastic (read: you go write about important things, like politics, war, love, death, the afterlife, the bloody angels and their swords. i'm staying here with the damned pigeons).

either way: a little light.

mostly, i'll post other folks' stuff (and figure out which laws i'm violating as i do it) and i'll revel in their poems. and it'll keep me reading. and it'll keep me from playing too much online scrabble. and it'll give a little light to the day.


postcard

my dear,
this is the world's largest
thermometer. this is the turquoise-soaked
ocean. these are green hills, stacked
like your knuckles. this is my hand
writing to you. here: a sea, a mountain, your
name. which side will be taped to your
mirror? which side is the reverse? did i leave
my socks in your drawer? there is music
here, a guitar sometimes
in the evenings, and there are gulls
in the morning, with sunlight. i have lived nineteen
summers and twenty winters. the day i caught
my train, do you remember watching from
a fourth story window? i turned, looked up, and you
were there, leaning on the sill. and now i know
how to shoulder a backpack, catch rain in the collar
of my jacket, listen to the sounds of bookshops
opening, turn myself toward seasalt or sleep.

~ sally