Two Poems
Anthony A. Lee
The Sermon
___________________________________________________________________
(there were two of them, interrupted by a moment of contemplation)
was on the impossibility
of imagining death or anything
after that—only
hotel rooms and penthouse windows,
shoes empty on the floor,
the private pool below the balcony
blue in its shininess,
the lapping of the ocean tide
on the rocky shoreline, its pleasant whisper—
which obviously is not enough.
A hundred thousand years of human consciousness
and we still have no words for spirit.
Our language for death conceals it
and everything beyond
is fragile, vulnerable, breakable—the preacher
despaired, taking refuge in God,
but said he doesn’t mourn at funerals,
as dying is physical,
like eating pastry, drinking coffee,
stretching for yoga, growing bigger,
standing for a bus, playing soccer, coming home,
hearing piano music in a concert hall (Chopin),
catching your breath before a stand
of green forest along the mountain road
or a painting in the corridor of the Chicago
art museum, like feeling the slippery thrusts
of love, the sweaty joy of dancing,
the crunch of tempura, the saltiness of pesto,
the heat of the tea, the sweetness of strawberries,
the coldness of the stone floor on my forehead,
the masculine warmth of the handshakes after,
nervous smiles: my only hope of salvation.
The dead do not tell us their secrets.
Notre Dame/Our Lady
___________________________________
I pick up a candle in the cathedral
near the niche of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
I don’t want anything to do with her,
so I move down two pillars to the place
of St. Charles, whoever he is.
I get down on my knees, tourists crowds behind,
not thinking that it will make any
difference. Still, Charles is a good name—
as good as any other—and it never hurts
to ask. I don’t care what they all think.
I turn my back on the mass
(singing qui tolis to the Lamb
of God who takes away sins of the world)
drop two euros in the box, light my flame
to pray for someone else. Charles is my lady.
The grey stone of the church floor
is worn and damp. Medieval. Gothic arches
reach halfway to the sky. Stained glass,
white, yellow, red, green, blue,
painted with black. Sooty statues,
souvenir shops, winking candles.
In Bangladesh, there are a few Hindus.
Once, I put my forehead to the ground
before the white, graven image
of a goddess there—I forget her name.
No euros, no candles, one
flower was enough. I took off
my shoes, repeated Sanskrit the priest spoke,
but didn’t drink the white holy water
he dribbled in my hands.
Sometimes, I say Hail Marys naked
in the steam room at my gym. I pray
towards Mecca with Muslims when I can.
Maybe I have a chance.
Anthony A. Lee teaches African American history at UCLA. His poems have been published in various journals, including ONTHEBUS, The Homestead Review, Härter, and New Plains Review. He is the winner of the Nat Turner Poetry Prize for 2003 (Cross Keys Press). His first book, This Poem Means, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for 2005 (Lotus Press). His translations have been published in Táhirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Kalimát Press, 2004). He conducts a poetry workshop in Manhattan Beach, Califonria.