Up late or early, anyone’s choice.  I was impressed enough by an interview on Morning Joe to talk about it at La Parola Vivace, my other blog:

“… one advantage to half-sleeping at odd hours is that I often am privileged to tune in to Morning Joe on MSNBC.  This morning’s interview with Condoleeza Rice was worth losing sleep to catch.”

To read the rest of this post, please click here.

Now that the miners and rescue workers are safe, here’s a poem in draft:

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Neruda Returns

As Light, Bread  –

“Because we plant its seed
and grow it
not for one man
but for all,
there will be enough:
there will be bread
for all the peoples of the earth.”

.  From The Ode to Bread, Pablo Neruda

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Enough of the Chilean miners, they are saved.

What of those trapped in the angry mountain,

The children with nothing to eat,

No one to sing to them–

.

Neruda stopped off

In the night-clad mine in Chile;

He came as a white mariposa

To the carrier pigeon handler

He paid his respects;

he sang that there is bread enough

for all.

But his heart is with the children,

In the caves we cannot see.

His ghost, living

In their hands and hair.

His fire and ice, the lullabies

The dying half-remember,

Rise in the throat:  Even so

They keen, cry

For mothers smelling of milk and honey

.

Snow blankets the Americas.

It is unseen winter; the landscape pocked

With  deep, open graves.  We shine a light down:

“Are you all right?  I’ll be back.”

We dance away, drinking glasses

Of forgetfulness.

.

Lightning sears the faces

Of the ones waiting

For rescue,

Lashing its long tail

into the tunnels–

I will lead you there.  Here

Is someone buried underground.

He is trapped in the mountain.

There is no morning

No sun.  For this person

The universe

Has swallowed itself.

Hope is coiled around itself

An adder

in rigor.

.

ii

.

Someone is weeping

In a garden in Geneva

At his wife’s headstone.

Her song is everywhere

But she, the body of love

Has gone.

He pulls the satin-edged night

Over his head–

She touched his face at the end

Reprising her Covent Garden

Adio del Pasatto–

Quickly, amore,

There is one with roses

In her hair, at the gate.

.

Which fate is worse:

The tomb of grief,

Self-imposed exile

In solidarity with the lost?

Such heavy stones no one

Feverishly at work

Can pull them away–

Or change the destinies of starvation,

Millions of  thin dark bodies

Asleep on a plain

Descended upon

By the true armies

Of the night.

.

Light never enters a mine.

Only the semblance of light

Only the echo of song

A match flares

And goes out.

Waiting for rescue

They die a thousand deaths.

When love hauls them

To the surface,

They weep in someone’s hair

.

Night makes deep tunnels

In the earth

Hides the children there

Promises them water, dreams

Not starved for air.

Neruda’s phantom, the ghosts

Of our hands,  prayers

Of little consequence,

Reassurances we send down to them

All they have; there is no bread

For the damned.

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copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews 2010