Don't Know Jack

For the students of Rendafuzhong, especially Knight

When professors asked me what James Joyce and Franz Kafka had been trying to say, I could not answer.

When my students asked me to proofread their entrance essays for Harvard and Yale, what could I say? And when they told me they wanted to go to America to solve the problem of their terrible lives, I was speechless.

When an earthquake struck Sichuan Province and my classroom wept because it was students just like them who had died and on the chalkboard they drew pictures of blood coming from the earth, what did a 23-year-old have to offer them?

Know Who You Are

For Myself

Don’t be so certain

The person who spent time with you, then did not

Don’t pretend; they changed you

And the person who pledges all their time to you

Don’t be afraid

And the lemons of Sorrento

And the gulls of Capri

And the black sands of Positano

Let them all change you

And the steps of Revello, make no mistake

Each one holds the prayer, “Let me never be the same”

(The limestone hillsides crumble, brightening the water’s blue)

And the way the Sirenuse lies in the glittering Tyrrhenian

It has much to teach you

Don’t be so certain

Know in Part

For Paul the Apostle

Which part of knowledge did you pursue

When you studied for hours in the library catacombs

Building a tower of Siloam out of books?

The part that brought me to conviction

Which part of knowledge drove you so violent?

Those around you could smell sharpened metal on your breath

Not until you found peace were you told your learning had driven you mad

The part I left along the road

Which part of knowledge presses you on

For which would you count your own life worthless

For what its years have taught you, or what is yet to be revealed?

I Know What I Know

I Know What I Know

For Karen O

“I think it's really kind of the ballsiest and most punk thing you can do…”

-Karen O (on writing love songs)

Let them keep the fame, the applause, the money

We have confetti on our faces and you've told us it’s our song

When we walk out we’re ordinary and we’re still ordinary right now

We don’t need to copy the different and the edgy

Yes, we may have been drawn to you for your desperate self-destructiveness

And wished we could live so uninhibited and never care about the consequences

But it was better when you gave us ourselves back, you said

“My sun is your sun”

Nothing is more outrageous than falling in love

And haven’t we all done that?

Three Drabbles for Three Days

Knowing

For Edith Hamilton

It has all been accounted for. The children of unwed mothers we know are sired by Apollo and Zeus, who can no more be blamed than they can be refused.

It is how we know when the mountain sends rocks of flame that Pele is in a molten rage against her lover. She has seen his eyes on another woman.

It is how we know that long ago Mosquito asked Ear for her hand in marriage, and though she did not consent still he comes by night to be near and to speak with her. And so you are sleepless.

Always Knew It Was You

For Sylvia Plath

You bastard

For what do I seek you?

Can you now give a little girl the love that is her right, her due?

Ich, Ich, Ich, Ich. To speak of you is to spit

I burn the photographs but still they rise in my mind,

They stick in my mind like glue

And you, Ach, Du,

You are stuck in my mind too

And your hometown, and your hometown

On the map a dozen or two

Wars could not raze them

Why war to raze you?

You have gone where I cannot find you

Still I will follow

And soon

Know and Believe

For John the apostle and Rilke the poet

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke

What can we know of love

Wading through infinity?

Each day we learn to love

Each day what is to be learned expands

As if sent from a blast that started time

Was it not love that exploded us into being?

Doesn’t it ignite within us like the last great burst of a star?

And now when we are infinitely known, does it matter,

The distance?

From the furthest drifting of the universe I can see your incandescence

Hear your song

A song that is everything you

Yet is sung through you

As if you were both originator

And instrument