Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

The Unwritten Poem

The poem I have not yet written
   whose first line would be the doorsill
   to another space

The poem I have not written yet
   whose form would be that space domed for meeting
   filled with its own darklight
   like the shine from invisible candles

The poem I have not written
   whose words would be humans met
   in understanding

The poem not yet written
   whose voice would be the inner voice of all

that poem
I would send you

An Invitation
 
We gather here to see
faces from which we need not hide our face,
to hear the sound of honest speech, to share
what dreams have etched upon the sleeping brain,
what the still voice has said, when heavy hours
plunged us to regions of the mind and life
not mentioned in the marketplace: to find
and match the threads of common destinies,
designs grimed over by our thoughtless life--
A sanctuary for the common mind
we seek. Not to compete, but to compare
what we have seen and learned, and to look back
from here upon that world where tangled minds
create the problems they attempt to solve
by doubting one another, doubting love,
the wise imagination, and the word.
For, looking back from here upon that world,
perhaps ways will appear to us, which when
we only struggled in it, did not take
counsel of kindred minds, lay undiscovered;
perhaps, reflecting on the Babeled speech
of various disciplines that make careers,
we shall find out some speech by which to address
each sector of the world's fragmented truth
and bring news of the whole to every part.
We say the mind, once whole, can mend the world.
To mend the mind, that is the task we set.
How many years? How many lives? We do not know;
but each shall bring a thread.

Song

If you must indeed return there, pray speak of me to the
   cyclamen,
To the lavender flowers on the chinaberry trees,
To the evening star as it gleams in the sky at twilight,
And to the asphodel; for I found none faithful save these.

And it will be when you lift your eyes to the twilight
Sky with the evening star, that you will remember again,
And I will be the evening star to you, and the scent of the
   chinaberry trees,
And you will not lose your soul amid the sons of men.

You Almost Remember

Think: your
own hand
has held this pain-reclaimed,
pain
requickened portion
of habitable earth
fast. 

You have half forgotten, you almost remember the dream
Of a native country whose language was joy
Despite the numerous crosses, the wide denial
Of an abundance flowing from the infinite
Founding the city upon the reformed heart
And sustaining the world through one small land.

It always was about this piece of land
Where a people held together by a dream
(Or compressed by surrounding pressures into a heart)
Found, between towering walls, the way to joy
Just for a moment that seemed infinite
Before the jaws of empire closed in denial.

But they could meet denial with denial.
They could pay out, while fleeing from the land,
A long, strong cord of story. The lost is infinite
Possession. In possession of a dream
They did not unlearn how to sing for joy.
Wandering, they carried with them their country's heart.

For their singers had built the temple of the heart.
It stood unshakeably footed on denial.
Swaying with eyes closed they could enter its joy
Though many kin remained behind in the land
At the mercy of those who had stolen the dream
And changed its vision of the Infinite

Into a conqueror's program of infinite
Empire, feeding the victor's insatiable heart,
Merging spirit with the flesh-hued dream

Of the ravisher who heeds no denial
But goes trampling over land after land
To crush the rose of Sharon, all flowers of joy.

As it nears, humans abandon all hope of joy
Unless they are rooted in the infinite
Enough to hold on to this piece of land
With desperate strength, the last strength of the heart,
Even against kin, the captives of denial,
Who would turn possession into our worst dream

There are those in this world who do not dream of joy.
The capacity for denial is infinite.
Abandonments lay waste the world's heart-land.

Instructional Verses
(The Path of Song)

Those who aspire to the skill of singing
 And wish to know how to acquire it
Should bear in mind with joy and reverence
Four things chiefly: the word, the self,
The human other, the cosmic Whole.
First the word: how each word we use
Contains a wealth, a world of meaning.
At every hour watch words in action,
To names above all accord attention,
For the act of naming is half of art.
Read, too, the books of the bards before you,
Watch what they do and how they do it,
At tradition's table listen and learn.
Next, attend to yourself, your soul,
Storehouse of memories, well of dreams,
Wearer of wounds, seeker of healing,
Unending teller of its own tale,
Source of melody beyond experience:
Those who can hear both tale and tune,
To them all things bring signs of guidance.
Then, the others who are to themselves
Storehouses of memories, wells of dreams,
Wearers of wounds, seekers of healing,
Unending tellers of their own tales,
Source of melody beyond experience,
Messengers to you as you to them.
Above all, abhor envy like poison,
For envy blinds the I in the other,
Blots creation with hatred of good.
If envy stings, let its sting alert you
To what you must praise lest your soul perish,
Then draw its fang with magnanimous deed
And all you acknowledge shall be your own.
Last and first: the cosmic Whole,
The household of Earth and all its inhabitants,
The infinite fugue of human fates,
The hope of vision, of one awareness
Embracing all earth, surmounting strife,
In each true word the poet utters
Calls to attention, advances toward peace.

Vast is the Way, complex beyond knowing,
Yet free, unforced as a child's chanting;
At every step the goal is present
And most when we manage the step of silence.
May all who read this find friends in wisdom
And inspiration for sacred song!

Corpses Clog The Litmags

The soul is naked among enemies,
    And nowhere does it take more grievous wounds
        Than where well-meaning poets hack away
            At one another's poems. Merciless
As angels of the IRS, they pounce
    On any word that each deems not OK,
        Seldom standing still for long to guess
            At the moving shape on the poem's horizon

Or hear the word the poem cannot quite say.
    The poet, on his knees, starts to confess
        His errors as they're fingered one by one.
            Soon from his comrades' hands he takes the knife
And cuts the poem's tie to his own breath
    And does the rest of what the pack wants done.
        Its maker's eyes lit with thirst for its life-Blood
            are the last thing the poem sees.
The corpses clog the litmags by the ton.

Epitaph on a Landfill

Here lies the matter of the universe,
Murdered by mind amuck, which has so made
These lightless forms that they can never fade
And bloom again in the cycle of the years:
The atoms have outwornness like a curse
Indelibly affixed, and now must bide,
Impervious as an evildoer's pride,
Itching and suppurating in the earth.

Here unrots our presumption's mutant fruit,
Death beyond death! Corpses and dung are sweet
As apple blossom in comparison.
You who drive by here, pray we amend
Our works that they return to Earth as friend
And we to the Great Round, the All-in-One.

Marital Agreements

When two decide to bind their lives together,
Having no thought except for love alone,
They cannot fear that clouds could ever gather
Between them, or their love to strife be prone.
Love, absolute, commands that voice be dumb
Which cautions that enchantment can take flight
And then estrangement, and then anger come
Which blinds the angered to the other's right.
O Love! be humble in your proudest hour,
Consider that you work in mortal clay;
Secure yourself against the darker power
By contracts that will bind you to fair play
If worst should come to worst. Then many a storm
May lightly blow, knowing it cannot harm.

Reading Poetry at the State Capitol
on Saturday Afternoon

The hive of government is empty now,
stone wedding-cake of power and hired art,
stately it stands upon the narrow brow
that keeps two lakes apart;
only the overtaxed or overzealous
 still burrow, plot and plan
the people's and Earth's bane
of which a headline some months hence will tell us.

Upon a corner of the Capitol Square
given to the people for a weekly fair,
a knot of poets try to raise their voices
above the waning noises
of morning's market; shoppers going home
have little time to spend
on a word that is no friend
to the football cheer, the television's drone.

The various causes, too, already fold
their tables, and the meager dollars doled
by citizens whom various wrongs incense,
though few seek out the sense
of the vast web that implicates them all,
which solely through the word
of poets, when it's heard,
relates the part to the comprehended whole.

So thinly now in end-of-summer air
amid the sounds of life's retreat, yet clear,
our voices sing the mating-dance of thought,
the rain-dance that has brought
the lightning down on many a throne
in ages past, and still,
could we reforge the will,
might lift a wave of earth beneath this dome.

So hear us, powers of water, earth and air,
all civic spirits that may linger here
to grieve the ruin of your good intent:
teach us the government

of the eternal and unchanging Way
and show the paths that lead
through minds of those that heed,
that here true counsel's house
   may stand someday.

The Bard Liadan, or Perhaps One of the Rishis,
Considers the Information of a Time-Traveler

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 
                                         -- Shakespeare

But, traveler, if you hear me, as I you,
And if your well of wit is not near dry,
will you not return and tell your comrades
the time has come to win word's honor back,
reforge the canon and the sacred forms,
reconvene the counsels of the wise,
send forth your strongest voices to beseech
the people to return to reason's measure?
The words of all who say so will be deeds,
worthy of space in the memory of the gods;
the rest is vanity, the trash of time
which time will sweep away.

Social Security

   Each one has a name . . .
                    -- Zelda

Just as you need a Social Security number,
each person needs a poetic identity.

A name that is nothing like a number,
that ties us
to the uncountable.
A constellation of syllables that recall
whatever spoke to us
when we were alone.

A name by which we are called up
when courage is needed,
A name by which we can be held
to the promises of love.

A name like the pouch of charms
round the neck of the shaman,
like the box of small treasures
 each child should have the right
to bring to school.

A name that weaves us
into the text
of a common life,
a life among kin.

And the poet should be the one
who goes 'round
giving names.

Esther Cameron received her Ph.D. in German from the University of California, Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Her poetry and essays have been featured in Bellowing Ark, Antigonish Review, Hunger Magazine, and on The Hyper Texts (www.thehypertexts.com), and have also appeared in Poetry, Midstream, Romantics Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, and other journals. Cameron is the author of "The Consciousness of Earth," a blank verse epic on the ecological crisis, recently published in installments by Bellowing Ark. She edits The Neovictorian/Cochlea, a journal of poetry, as well as a website, Point and Circumference (www.pointandcircumference.org).
"Corpses Clog the Litmags" first appeared in Expansive Poetry and Music Online. "Marital Agreements" was first published in Wisconsin Lawyer. "Invitation" was previously published in B'Or Ha'Torah and Healers. "Song," "You Almost Remember," "The Unwritten Poem," and "Invitation" all appeared in The Hyper Texts.