Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024
Rope Tied To A Song: April 30, 1975, poems by Stephen Haven.
Rope Tied To A Song: April 30, 1975
The moment the war ends, my father, my mother have gone
To gather their old friends. They have driven to the other side
Of my old town in the Volkswagen. From front porches,
From the rough and tumble of mill yards, American flags
Renounce the colors of love. Somewhere in Saigon
There is singing, there is a monk who does not immolate
Himself in the streets. The killing still goes on.
They will pull the church bell then walk into the silence
Of the chancel. No peace, ever, since 1941.
I am many miles from that place, and yet I feel it
As a kind of home, the thick hemp tied to a song
That lifts me bodily, white surplice over black,
My winged childhood a full foot off the varnished floor,
The basement’s trap door. The war goes on.
And yet this moment, the rung cup of other steeples,
No psalm, no sermon, no word for the liturgical hush
Of that shudder, not quite sound, not quite its absence,
In the moment just after. Some blood between them too
But not in this quietude, all their children grown out
From that space. This is the place I choose to lift
A ceremonial glass. The body remembers water, wine,
Music or something like it, the near stillness
Of love as it was and always now will be:
Over the rooftops, each flogged day,
The bell an otter in water, the still black bullet of its clapper.
Old Church Photograph
Your father’s gray tower, his old hard drive,
Sparks to life, every kid coat and tied
Except one rebel in a sweater, open shirt
Beneath his cocked smirk, everyone else
Sporting black cloth but you and your brother,
Youngest ditties in the circa ’64
Men and Boys Choir. Easter gleams
In your light jackets. Only you two beam,
Wink through the doom. Behind you
Gothic stone, the ivied rectory you once
Called home, your father back row central,
A head taller than the other men. All the names
You almost know, the one kid in glasses,
Dead the day before his only marriage,
All of you on the breeze of a bus ride down
To New York City! The World’s Fair!
Progressland! six rotating stages, carousel
Of how our digs have changed, iceboxes,
Street lights, the range of our robotic lives,
Sparking new the old routines of death and love—
“A fellow named Tom Edison.” 24-minute
Revolutions. There is no seventh stage
And on it you finally see the digital green
Of a taxi ferrying you an hour early
To the terminal. A satellite tugs
You toward your final love. She asks
A haunt to snap this “great and beautiful
Tomorrow, shining at the end of every day,
Just a dream away…” Past the gate
The stewardess locks the door.
The pilot offers nothing about the weather,
Destination, point of departure.
Almost inaudibly, as you click into your seat,
Through your absent earbud the cough,
The hum of an old engine, their muted nay,
Nee, ni, no nu, the old valved voices warming up.
Salem Easter
The inkwell of that Royal Purple
Smeared Easter on our fingertips:
Our lunch was an egg dyed
Onion-skin red on a seat cracked
For John Burroughs. Above us,
Five airy blue Eastern Orthodox bulbs
Trumped the plain cut truths
Of the old slate stones, our hands cold
Against those skulls, their crossed bones.
Then the mercy of dried flowers
In little gold piles, then the rows
Of less grave centuries, where masons
Winged the marbled dead to cherubs’
Lighter epiphanies. The trick
Of each reappearing dove
Fluttered in the wave of a silk red scarf.
In just a time of little matter
There were angels everywhere, lattes
Heavenly along the Wiccan shops,
Palm readings 50 bucks a pop,
The mall right down the road,
One kid on the Witch Walk
Riffing for his dinner in a topper
Calling to the crowd, Maybe we can
Even see them now. In cameo
A teenage shade blurred through
The clips of our chipped phones….
Then beer, chowder, the softening harbor…
We logged into Hawthorne’s light,
Glad he was born there, the old Bay State
Tuned sharply to its minor key
Far from that other clef, the wicks
All Concord burned where he was buried.
We dreamed of a seaside condo, the train
To Boston, slapped sails tethered
To our late mornings. Seasoned
In that choir, singed in one hymn
With all the old-time barkers
We knew that in America
The deeper spirit is the darker.
© Stephen Haven
Stephen Haven’s fourth book of poems, The Flight from Meaning, is forthcoming from Slant Books in January 2025. His earlier collections are The Last Sacred Place in North America, Dust and Bread, and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks. He is also author of the book-length memoir, The River Lock: One Boy’s Life Along the Mohawk, and editor and collaborative translator of the 300-page dual language (Mandarin and English) anthology, Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China. Among other awards, he has received grants or residency fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Chautauqua, the Ohio Arts Council, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, MacDowell, Djerassi, and Yaddo. More details at www.stephenhaven.com