Another Berkeley Crucifixion

 

Cruxifixion was common in those days, every
theater troupe was doing it to Jesus
but we chose Desmond, hung him on wires.

He rose, a black martyr dangling
over a blur of white faces, a chorus
shrieking, moaning hate, love, loneliness,

envy and despair. I directed the voices,
made them rise, harmonize, die away
as Desmond was doing above us

until there were only whispers like snakes
slithering through dry grass, then
madness climbing to a climax, cacophony

cut off, and sudden silence. Our audience
always hated this scene and Desmond
got sore and hungry up there, we had to

have a picnic later in Tilden Park.
Greasy with chicken and roasted bananas,
we lazed in flowers, poured wine

in each other's tired mouths, looked
down on Berkeley brown with smog, another
smoldering summer, but we were too high

to smell the tear gas or hear windows
breaking or see a single police car
burning on Telegraph Avenue.

 

 

What the Woman Does

 

She bends over her crib to see if her baby
is breathing, inhales his sweetness that will not turn
sour till he is twleve and they have both
lost something. She plays the ocarina, a melody
so sad two tortoise shell combs fall from her hair.

In this story there is no husband, no father, just
men who fall from her life like combs too
delicate to hold her heavy curls. She plays tambourines,
flutes, thumb pianos, a zither that goes up in
flames. She dances with rain sticks.

She is in love with the ocean, the redwoods, but she
and her son travel east with a man in his old blue
Ford. They settle for a valley with lakes and loneliness
like ocean ghosts in winter. When she rounds a corner
and meets the dazzle of sun frozen on snow

she knows she can live anywhere in a moment. So she
studies strange langugages, puts on other women's dresses,
shoes to walk their cobblestone streets while her shadow
sleeps. The bread may be comforting or flavored with
fear, but she will sit in a moonlit café and eat.

 

 

Do Not Forget These Words

 

...now what is called death has arrived. You are
not alone in leaving this world, it happens to everyone...
whatever terrifying projections appear in the bardo of
dharmata, do not forget these words...whatever sounds,
colors and rays of light occur, they cannot hurt you and
you cannot die.

--The Tibetan Book of the Dead

You cannot call me to say she died:
Laura, mother of two sons, six and nine.

Today is hot and wet, my cats
sleep, black fur balls,
in windows. Even the August birds cheep
languidly, waiting for rain. I've been painting
my pantry, peeling off shelf paper,
tossing out rusty cans, listening to
Laurie Anderson sing Strange Angels,
and now you say Brain tumor, only thirty-six,
I misdiagnosed, thought it was thyroid,
her moods early menopause.

I do not weep with you, my friend,
a doctor, do not say What will you do now,
with two boys? I do not say I'm sorry I didn't
keep in touch, now it's too late. On my wall
two Buddhist monks in saffron robes
sit in the doorway of an ancient temple. They seem
to be smiling at our fear of death.

I do not ask if you whispered in Laura's ear
just before you turned off her breathing,
if you told her not to be
afraid of what she would see, not those
red-lit jealous gods,
nor the alluring smoky light of hell-beings.
Not even yellow hungry ghosts
or the thunder within
the blue so deep there is no center to hold on to.

But now as I hang up the phone,
I tell those monks to get off the wall
and get busy, there are journeys to take.
Because it may be calm and sunny in Nepal,
but there might be such fog
in the land of the dead that Laura
can't quite remember the people she loves.

And it's not clear here in New York either,
or in California, where a young doctor
listens to a dial tone as though it might
become the voice of God,
and two little boys, their eyes wide open
to the haunting bardo between death and birth,
lie flat on their mother's empty bed.

 

 

Behind the Big Cathedral

(Iraklion, Crete, 1990)

 

St. Minas' cathedral is closed:
Lord's supper, burning bramble, venerable
wise men, all those famous paintings,
the huge sanctuary roped off.
Come back later, says the toothless old man
who guards the great doors.

St. Katherine's church in back is smaller,
like a wife hiding in her husband's important shadow.
But open. I enter the cool, candlelit gloom:
ikons on walls, on curved dome ceilings,
a Byzantine pathwork quilt.
And everywhere women in black, kneeling.

Blinded by incense, Saint Katherine herself
is just one of the women suspended,
sweet and silent in the dusk.
I think of my father's poem:
the Shadowland princess, waiting for a prince
to come with mirrors.

Listen, I say in broken Greek, it's useless.
Jesus is on a cross next door,
God is on the ceiling, and the princes
never come. These are stories our fathers tell to keep
us framed or kneeling in our own space
while they keep theirs roped off.

Saint Katherine smiles,
accustomed to reverence and old habits,
and I see, in spite of my bold words,
just beyond the door that giant cathedral
eclipses more than the sun.

 

 

The Course of Criticism

 

The bird in my bathroom illustrates
the problem with birds: their stupidity
reveals "bird brain" to be an under-
statement, and although the bird
perching on my shampoo bottle while he
snatches a breather from bashing his head
against the walls and ceiling
while the open window looms
larger than the toilet bowl in which I fully
expect him to drown is a run-
of-the-mill robin redbreast and not
a nightingale or a skylark,
I could now never write an ode to him
if he were, and furthermore, I am sure
neither Keats nor Shelley had a bird
in his bathroom and another damn dead
bird in his kitchen and a fat black
cat going crazy trying to climb
the shower curtain when he--either Keats
or Shelley--returned home from buying
polyurethane, because if they had,
dozens of doctoral dissertations would have
since noted the Romantic cynicism toward birds
in their later work, and Noel Coward
would never have written "Blithe Spirit."

 

--Donna Spector

 

 

 

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