Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
In a corner of Eden
the one-horned black
rare rhinoceros slept in the shade,
How all things shatter, fall away, and break.
In this time of my great happiness I pass
And repass the gates of the Holy Ghost
Near Belsen, after thirteen years,
Low clouds above the meadows shudder.
Below me mustard
Your eyes show peace, discord
is foreign to your lips;
most necessary motion
Out of the jetty slip the dark bark rides,
As I more leave, each day, the man-leafed tree,
Hearing the Norse tell how they sail the sea.
The light is a grinder of knives jangling his bells
For seven in the morning. He is all the steeples
In the town calling for whatever this day must be new made.
The river was Missouri’s farthest source—
So clear and shallow, even stones and sand,
Under that sun, seemed golden in its course.
Satan in Eden was “constrain’d
Into a beast.”
All of the proud, like him, are pained,
I am custodian of close things.
Even winter trees have blurred
To leaf, and faces come upon me
I could not see the life I live.
Wheeling to catch it as it was,
I found myself the fugitive;