Entangled

Entangled

Even when

the heady

days are done

and the light

isn’t so

dramatic

I sink back

into the steadiness

of your hands

and my constant

rearrangement

of your slippers

by the

door.

You are a

singular

attachment

in this

samsara

plane.

Transcendence

is for

tomorrow

as I greedily

take in

the circle we

make

today.

Image: Mine (beach photo, 2003)

April 22, 2021

#NaPoWriMo2021 No. 22

There Is a Sacred, Secret Line in Loving: A Tribute to Anna Akhmatova

by Justine C. Tajonera

Portrait of A. Akhmatova by George Annenkof 1921.

Today, I received an email from About.com | Poetry and one of the topics was Anna Akhmatova. She is one of the most renowned Russian poets of her time. One of her greatest works is Requiem, a poem that describes the time her son, Lev, was imprisoned in the Gulag. You will see in that piece of literature why only a poet could write about such a terrible period in Russian history. While she is known for Requiem, it is the poem below that first captured my attention.

There are other translations of this poem but I have to credit Jane Kenyon for capturing it this way. I think this is the best translation. Or, at least the one that speaks to me.

Anna Akhmatova
(translated by Jane Kenyon)

There is a sacred, secret line in loving
which attraction and even passion cannot cross,—
even if lips draw near in awful silence
and love tears at the heart.

Friendship is weak and useless here,
and years of happiness, exalted and full of fire,
because the soul is free and does not know
the slow luxuries of sensual life.

Those who try to come near it are insane
and those who reach it are shaken by grief,
So now you know exactly why
my heart beats no faster under your hand.

-------------------

Akhmatova captures how love is one of those causes, one of those glimpses into the divine that shows us our humanity and our mortality. When one loves someone deeply...one becomes aware of their loss as well. That is the paradox of love. One must love and yet one must let go. How beautifully she puts it here. There is an apology somewhere at the end but she has explained it in the first two verses -- this is not a sensual love, a love made for happy days. This is a love that approaches the line of grief and madness. So forgive the absence of a pounding heart...because that line has been crossed. One could also read it as -- I will not cross it. Either way, it is a beautiful meditation on love and its many faces.

So, here is to poetry. And more poetry by women.

NaPoWriMo#27: All Is Fair

All Is Fair
By Justine C. Tajonera

There was a time that the end justified
the means. I pulled all stops. It was for
love, after all. I upped the stakes, I gambled
everything. It was for love, only that.
It meant the world would stop, it meant
I was to have my heart's desire, like a wish
made on the first star at night. It meant there
was no relief, no head that would turn my way
that wasn't his. If I was inconsolable it was
because of love, that noblest cause.
Years later, it only seems funny, all those
years of empty yearning. All is fair to those
who play the game. And even among games,
there are those that can be played by one.
Is it all that fair in solitaire? Only the player knows.
In games like that, there's nothing lost, nothing won.

Let You In

by Justine C. Tajonera

I have already let you in.
Pieces of you and pieces
of me
share the same spaces,
fill my mind with
useless mementos.

There is the jar of
candy that I gave you,
the cup of ice cream
that we both liked,
the spongy toy
you gave me
that makes me weep
or cringe
as it loiters
on my already crowded
desk.

I have already let you in.
There is no taking back
the time.

As much as I have
tried to purge
what little
there was,
I invited you in
at the beginning.

And that is where
you will stay.

No one ever told me
the rules
of the heart:

That there is no
diminishing,
that it can only
grow,
no matter
how painfully
it does.

June 29, 2010

Image of a heart sponge from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomgruber/493465010/

Eternal Life

by Justine C. Tajonera

No one has to have
eternal life
or heaven
on earth.

No one has
to believe.

But I could,
I could.

I could take this bread
and drink from this
cup
and honor
the divinity
that resides
within me

and I am free
to hold you in
my arms

and love you
and see forever
now.

(Feb. 28, 2010)
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/markus941/403409500/

Opening Line

By Justine C. Tajonera

It's just a simple conversation:
let's get together,
you and I,
let's talk all afternoon,
all evening,
if we can.

Then why is it so hard
to get this simple
message through
to you?

There's a dance around
this thing we are
doing,
something called
convention,
expectation.

I don't know.

There should be you
and me.
But in between

there are castles,
walls, screens,
stories, lies,
assumptions, rumors,
lakes, therapy,
thesis statements,
phobias and
pictures of
us

that are scrubbed
clean from my
facebook wall
but surfacing randomly

in my dreams:
mug shots flying by
as I do something ordinary
like open a door.

I want to open a door.
That's all I want
to do.

(Dec. 23, 2009)

For S.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/starrynight1/2250956869/

The Mermaid

By Justine C. Tajonera

There used to be a mermaid
who was scared of drowning,
beautiful scales undulating
in the waves,
warding off
inevitabilities
like
love.

There were sailors
aplenty who were
wrecked by
her singing,
but not so much more
than the mermaid herself,
whose heart had turned
to stone.

She had wandered in
and out
of the wrong fairy
tales,
bewildered by an
earnest toy soldier
and the icy touch
of a well meaning
ghost.

There was a prince
somewhere,
she heard,
waiting to find
her.

And so one day,
he did come
for her,
fins and
all.

But that was after
she had learned to
breathe.

(Dec. 22, 2009)

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathryn_rotondo/2180997509/

Black Valentine by Tess Gallagher

I post this because I ran into it while researching Tess Gallagher, the poetry teacher of Alice Sebold (author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky), the one she turned to at the time of her rape for some support.

In my first reading of it (because I read it three times in a span of minutes), I started to cry. "Silly to ask now if the hair/ she put on the altar, imagining her power over/ his passage, was dead or living."

Silly indeed. How does one measure loss? The same way one measures love, I guess.

Most of the poets I read have been, in some way, influenced by Buddhism. For what is poetry without meditation? The most striking insights that can find its frame only in fragments of words are prayer-songs or, in my own assessment, poems.

Black Valentine

by Tess Gallagher

I run the comb through his lush hair,

letting it think into my wrist

the way the wrist whispers to the cards

with punctuation and savvy in a game of solitaire.

So much not to be said the scissors

are saying in the hasp and sheer

of the morning. Eleven years I’ve cut

his hair and even now, this last time, we hide

fear to save pleasure

as bulwark. My dearest—the hair says as it brushes my

thighs—my only—on the way to the floor. If the hair

is a soul-sign, the soul obeys our gravity, piles up

in animal mounds and worships the feet. We’re

silent so peace rays over us like Bernice’s hair

shaken out across the heavens. If there were gods

we are to believe they animated her shorn locks

with more darkness than light, and harm

was put by after the Syrian campaign, and

harm was put by as you tipped the cards

from the table like a child bored

with losing. I spread my hair like a tent over us

to make safety wear its twin heads, one to face death,

the other blasted so piteously by love

you throw the lantern of the moment against

the wall and take me in with our old joke, the one

that marks my northern skies, “Hey, babe,” you say

like a man who knows how to live on earth. “Hey,”

with your arm around my hips, “what you doing

after work?” Silly to ask now if the hair

she put on the altar, imagining her power over

his passage, was dead or living.

Image of Tess Gallagher from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177702

Dreams About A Letter

By Justine C. Tajonera

She dreams about him
sometimes.
She always wakes up
at the moment
when he is about
to reply
to her.

A year ago
she told him
that she cared
for him,
knowing full well
that he would not
know what
it cost her
to write down
the words.

When she catches herself
clawing back
into her sleep
to retrieve
the thing
he did not
say

she remembers
that she was courageous,
that she once did
what she thought
she could not
do.

So while this story
is far from over,
she is lucky
that she has
no
regrets.

(Dec. 8, 2009)

For Kat


Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/funtik/1175522045/