I am so inspired ! I felt led to send this rendition.
I sit beside you on a city train or not, can you guess what I had for dinner?
Or not?
A deep breath would say its porkroast, or not?
The lunch grooves through the airways, perhaps.
The eyes burn from tears or not.
They fill with light from the oncoming car... Quick Move! Or not.
No you should move that's really a car.
My poem just flows like rivers of gassy moments, perhaps.
We sit at a table and eat. We walk down the street and fleet, we fly a kite while tea steeps, or not, or not.
My stomach it fills the bloat it also brings chills I see the hills I feel as if I cannot make it to the top until I sense a strange release from behind.
The air has changed... A small bird hits the ground singing songs of sorrow.
The crack in my grass has broken the swass perhaps, perhaps the man on the elevator knows the essence of the lunch I had perhaps?
Are you kiddin me?
The worst?
‘Praise Song For The Day’
A poem for Barack Obama's presidential inauguration.
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Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.
I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minn. A chapbook edition of "Praise Song for the Day" will be published on Feb. 6.
© 2009
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