polyform: Excerpt from my Letter to Brenna, 3 September 2007

9.05.2007

Excerpt from my Letter to Brenna, 3 September 2007

Right now in Portland, thick, teeming rainclouds hang low in the sky, only partially masking a brilliant sunset like a blindfold carelessly tied. All the worn brick warehouses and the light glass office towers are warmly glowing tonight. Every color is alive in this light, and all the frailties, all the ruined pieces showing through the potholes and the tired faces are softened and even somewhat mended. The wind moves gently and the whole street stirs.

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Reading

"A Ritual To Read To Each Other"

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

--William Stafford