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After The Failed Revolution, 1905
by Ruth Daigon
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After the hunger march to
the tsar's palace
begging for bread,
after the slaughter,
father sleeps in dialectical paradise and mother
packs the samovar, the china, the ruby glass,
the children.
Her face carries its tribe
just below the skin and
somewhere they are spinning the thread
measuring its length and breadth,
poised
with the terrible shears.
She restores the hair on her head,
gold teeth in broad smiles
and dreams of a land locked in amber.
Desire curled in her fist,
she sails for America
silent with all the others.
No wheel of miracles
just the hand which is, the eye which is
and the long nerve of history.
Breathless and sunblind, mother
tunnels through bitter earth
into salt of heaven.
She builds a fire to warm her children
and the flame is bright,
the shadows dim.
Learning English from the book
of exiles, she mouths words,
tonguing, polishing
until they grow liquid. Then
she nibbles on chicken wings,
gnawing bones clean.
Her thoughts tug at their moorings:
the half-light of childhood,
daybreaks bursting like seeds,
a forest of old tongues telling stories,
winds rattling obituaries,
and the past spreading its stain.
She whispers names out of time
until the new world arrives
fresh with heat and light.
Flesh tones of memory fade
as she stores the children
under her heart. Alone and growing
wiser, mother undresses the dark
and sleeps with moonlight
resting in her palms.
Copyright © 1999 Ruth Daigon
All Rights Reserved |
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Ruth Daigon was editor of Poets
On: for twenty years until it
ceased
publication. She won "The Eve of St. Agnes Award (Negative Capability 1993 and was rurner-up in 94). She's
been widely published: Shenandoah,
Negative Capability, Poet & Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Tikkun....Internet "E" zines include Ariga, Crania, CrossConnect, Zuzu's Petals, Switched
On Gutenberg, Recursive Angel, Mudlark, ELF
both in print and on the NET). Ruth has also appeared as Poet-Of-The-Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an "E" chapbook in English and Spanish). Web Del Sol has
recently published her latest chapbook on the WEB. Her poetry collection "Between One Future And
The Next" was published by Papier-Mache Press 1995 followed by "About A Year" (Small Poetry Press
in 1996), Gale Research included her autobiography in their Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, 1997 and
she won the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 but the book (University of Southern California) was just published
in September of '98. |
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