A Grain of Mustard Seed (2 page)

The mad alone have truth to tell

In the mad games they play—

Our love has withered away.

The Rock in the Snowball

(
for Mark Howe
)

How little I knew you, Mark, to mourn so wild

As if death hit square in the mouth today.

That snowball held a rock and it hurt hard.

But even outraged, am I still a child

To take death with raw grief and howl my way

Hand against mouth to ward off the word?

How little I knew you, Mark, but for the blue

Those deep-set eyes shafted across a room

To prick the ghost of pride or of pretence,

That straight look into doom if it were true,

That poker look that made our laughter bloom

And burned up sham like paper with a glance.

You were exposed, a man stripped down to care,

Thin as a boy, tempest-torn as a boy,

And sick with pity, conscience-caught-and-bound.

Courage is easy—every boy can dare—

But harder to keep justice from that joy,

And bury feeling, your self-inflicted wound.

And yet you burned. And yet you burned so deep,

Mastering fire, controlling fire with wit,

That eulogies seem pale beside your breath,

And we are fools, since you would not, to weep.

We mourn ourselves, that is the truth of it,

Hit by the savage rock that is your death.

Whatever end we hoped with you alive,

To be those few, and happy, growing old,

To talk of battles shared, of false and true,

That light is gone. We shall have to survive

As remnants in a world turned grim and cold

Where once we laughed at Hell itself with you.

The Ballad of Ruby
*

Her mother dressed the child in white,

White ribbons plaited in her hair,

And sent her off to school to fight

Though it was very cruel there.

“Ruby, we have to show our pride.

Walk slow, and just be dignified.”

So Ruby walked to school each day

While the white mothers screamed “Black scum!”

Never got dirty out at play

For she spent recess in her room,

And felt the hatred seeping in.

“What is it, mother? What have I done?”

But still her mother had to trust

That that white dress so clean and neat

Would show the truth because it must,

Her Ruby was so bright and sweet.

And every day the crowd grew bigger

And threw stones at the “dirty nigger.”

Then Ruby shook her ribboned head,

Refused to eat a chocolate cookie,

Had nightmares every night in bed,

Broke her brown crayons—“They are mucky!

“Ugly is black. Ugly is last.”

(Ruby at six was learning fast).

And when the teacher let them draw,

Ruby made all black people lame,

White people tall, strong, without flaw.

Her drawing did not need a name.

“It is plain black and white, you see.

And black is ugly. Black is me.”

“We’ll poison you” became the taunt.

“You’ll learn to keep away from white!”

And so a new fear came to haunt

The child who had no appetite,

Locked into blackness like some sin.

“Why mother? Is it
only
my skin?”

But still she walked to school with glory,

And ran the gauntlet, dignified…

Did she grow up to tell a different story?—

“White folks are black, all dirty down inside.

What makes them like they are, ugly within?

Is it
only
the color of their skin?”

*
The story of Ruby is told by Robert Coles in
Children of Crisis,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1967.

The Ballad of Johnny

(
A News Item
)

For safety on the expedition

A name-tag on each child was hung,

A necklace-name, his very own,

So he could not get lost for long.

Johnny jumped up and down for joy

To have a name forever true.

“I’m Johnny,” cried the little boy.

“Johnny is going to the zoo!”

“Johnny,” he whispered in the subway.

His whole face was suffused with bliss.

This was the best, the greatest day.

Boldly he gave his name a kiss.

But soon forgot it at the zoo

And let the name-tag swing out free,

For could that elephant be true?

And there was so much there to see…

Look, Johnny, at the monkey swinging

High in the air on his trapeze!

He heard the gibbon’s sharp shrill singing

And begged to hold the monkey, please.

Then saw a goat and ran off fast

To hug the dear fantastic thing,

An animal to stroke at last,

A living toy for all his loving.

The soft lips nibbled at his sweater

And Johnny laughed with joy to feel

Such new-found friendliness and, better,

To know this animal was real.

His face was breathing in fur coat,

He did not notice anything

As gentle lips and greedy throat

Swallowed the name-tag and the string.

But when he found that they were gone

And he had lost his name for good,

Dreadful it was to be alone,

And Johnny screamed his terror loud.

The friendly goat was strange and wild,

And the cold eyes’ indifferent stare

Could give no comfort to the child

Who had become No one, Nowhere.

“I’ve lost my name. I’m going to die,”

He shouted when his teacher came

And found him too afraid to cry.

“But, Johnny, you still have your name!

“It’s not a tag, it’s in your head,

And you are Johnny through and through.

Look in the mirror,” teacher said,

“There’s Johnny looking out at you.”

But he had never had a mirror,

And Johnny met there a strange child

And screamed dismay at this worse error,

And only grew more lost and wild.

“No, no,” he screamed, “that is not me,

That ugly boy I don’t know who…”

Great treasure lost, identity,

When a goat ate it at the zoo.

Easter, 1968

Now we have buried the face we never knew,

Now we have silenced the voice we never heard,

Now he is dead we look on him with awe…

Dead king, dear martyr, and anointed Word.

Where thousands followed, each must go home

Into his secret heart and learn the pain,

Stand there on rock and, utterly alone,

Come to terms with this burning suffering man;

Torn by his hunger from our fat and greed,

And bitten by his thirst from careless sloth,

Must wake, inflamed, to answer for his blood

With the slow-moving inexorable truth

That we can earn even a moment’s balm

Only with acts of caring, and fierce calm.

Head of an African, vital and young,

The full lips fervent as an open rose,

The high-domed forehead full of light and strong—

Look on this man again. The blood still flows.

Listen once more to the impassioned voice

Till we are lifted on his golden throat

And trumpet-call of agony and choice

Out of our hesitating shame and doubt.

Remember how he prayed before the task.

Remember how he walked, eyes bright and still,

Unarmed, his bronze face shining like a mask,

Through stones and curses, hatred hard as hail.

Now we have silenced the voice we never heard,

Break open, heart, and listen to his word.

The Invocation to Kali

“…the Black Goddess Kali, the terrible one of many names, ‘difficult of approach,’ whose stomach is a void and so can never be filled, and whose womb is giving birth forever to all things…”

—Joseph Campbell,
The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology,
The Viking Press, Inc. 1962, p. 5.

1

There are times when

I think only of killing

The voracious animal

Who is my perpetual shame,

The violent one

Whose raging demands

Break down peace and shelter

Like a peacock’s scream.

There are times when

I think only of how to do away

With this brute power

That cannot be tamed.

I am the cage where poetry

Paces and roars. The beast

Is the god. How murder the god?

How live with the terrible god?

2

The Kingdom of Kali

Anguish is always there, lurking at night,

Wakes us like a scourge, the creeping sweat

As rage is remembered, self-inflicted blight.

What is it in us we have not mastered yet?

What Hell have we made of the subtle weaving

Of nerve with brain, that all centers tear?

We live in a dark complex of rage and grieving.

The machine grates, grates, whatever we are.

The kingdom of Kali is within us deep.

The built-in destroyer, the savage goddess,

Wakes in the dark and takes away our sleep.

She moves through the blood to poison gentleness.

She keeps us from being what we long to be;

Tenderness withers under her iron laws.

We may hold her like a lunatic, but it is she

Held down, who bloodies with her claws.

How then to set her free or come to terms

With the volcano itself, the fierce power

Erupting injuries, shrieking alarms?

Kali among her skulls must have her hour.

It is time for the invocation, to atone

For what we fear most and have not dared to face:

Kali, the destroyer, cannot be overthrown;

We must stay, open-eyed, in the terrible place.

Every creation is born out of the dark.

Every birth is bloody. Something gets torn.

Kali is there to do her sovereign work

Or else the living child will be still-born.

She cannot be cast out (she is here for good)

Nor battled to the end. Who wins that war?

She cannot be forgotten, jailed, or killed.

Heaven must still be balanced against her.

Out of destruction she comes to wrest

The juice from the cactus, its harsh spine,

And until she, the destroyer, has been blest,

There will be no child, no flower, and no wine.

3

The Concentration Camps

Have we managed to fade them out like God?

Simply eclipse the unpurged images?

Eclipse the children with a mountain of shoes?

Let the bones fester like animal bones,

False teeth, bits of hair, spilled liquid eyes,

Disgusting, not to be looked at, like a blight?

Ages ago we closed our hearts to blight.

Who believes now? Who cries, “merciful God”?

We gassed God in the ovens, great piteous eyes,

Burned God in a trash-heap of images,

Refused to make a compact with dead bones,

And threw away the children with their shoes—

Millions of sandals, sneakers, small worn shoes—

Thrust them aside as a disgusting blight.

Not ours, this death, to take into our bones,

Not ours a dying mutilated God.

We freed our minds from gruesome images,

Pretended we had closed their open eyes

That never could be closed, dark puzzled eyes,

The ghosts of children who went without shoes

Naked toward the ovens’ bestial images,

Strangling for breath, clawing the blight,

Piled up like pigs beyond the help of God…

With food in our stomachs, flesh on our bones,

We turned away from the stench of bones,

Slept with the living, drank in sexy eyes,

Hurried for shelter from a murdered God.

New factories turned out millions of shoes.