Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

American poet Stanley Plumly has taught English at University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program. Raised in Ohio, he helped found the Ohio Review while teaching at Ohio University, where he earned his M.A.
 

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Mission Work

PoemsBy Aaron Baker

Mariner Books

Copyright © 2008 Aaron Baker
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780618982677
CHIMBU WEDDING

When the villagers stake out a hundred pigs
and two men wade in with clubs,
watch how they float, cold as light out of heaven,
above the scene. When the pigs scream
and buckle with their skulls caved in,
remember that not one thing in this world
will be spared. Not one leaf. Not one
hair on a child's head. See the women
hauling rocks to the fire-pits,
the boys kneeling to collect blood
in banana leaves, and think of St. Peter's
vision: cloven-hoofed creatures descending
on a sheet, the sky saying "Take, eat."
Learn to sit in the smoke with hunger sated
as children play with bladders they've inflated
like balloons. Learn a new language
for fellowship, and when you walk home
through the fields see if you can translate
the gloam-wrapped mountain's whisper
as Come. Then, if there is a place
prepared for the saints, you will know
which way to turn at the crossroads.
You will not trouble the angel at the garden
gate for a way past her sword. You will
not remember what blood washed you clean.


CARGO CULT

See how this works: I'm a dead boy come over the water.
Skin pale since it's bloodless, hair bleached blond
by the sun of an unforested country, I bring good
blades and fine cloth. My voice is strange music
and I want nothing of yours. There's health
in my touch. Eat the bread, drink the blood
and the sea, which for so long delivered only
upcoast coconuts, handfuls of shells
for charms, and scraps of meat that lay in the froth



SECOND GENESIS
Bees float in the frangipanis behind the chapel.
The day's wash hangs limp on the line.
Meugle's father has gone to battle,
mine to set the Bible against the bow and spear.
We train a telescope on the hills.
Women move slowly through the fields.
I see, says Meugle, the Dagle Mitna sitting on their shields,
my father and Apa drawing arrows in the brush.
I lean in for a look, see in the circle of light
a woman bowed over her garden.
Yes, I say, your father has killed a man.
Meugle nods, his thoughts more distant from me
than our fathers. I see beside the woman
a naked child weaving garlands out of grass.

* * *

Will you find me where I'm hid?
Have angels finished wrestling in these fields?
Our battle is not against flesh and blood —
I palm the black book. You notch your arrow.
Our fathers are at war with our brothers.
We'll be a single son of this country
when each has killed half of the other.

* * *

Flight through the rain-streaked half-light,
thick splatter on fronds.
The pig crashes through the underbrush,
frayed rope snaking after him.
I snort, slip in the mud, scramble head-first
through brambles and vines,
then rise in the clearing
where Meugle lifts the pig,
snout gripped shut by a fist.
Pulsing at my throat, my life.
Meugle kneels to use the knife.

* * *

In the game of war, our spears are stalks of fern.
I lie in the hillside grass and take my turn
as a sleeping sentry. Even in play, I feel a sudden fear
of his dark shape on the sky. When he strikes,
I writhe and die around my wound.
He shouts, raises his spear. When I rise,
he wipes grass seeds from my shoulders and hair.

* * *

Smells of woodsmoke and sweat fill the cool of the hut.
Meugle's wet face glows over the fire.
He rolls a sweet potato from the embers with a stick,
touches my shin with its still-warm tip — Ene Yegwa, yours.
I hold the potato in both hands, decide it's my heart,
that I will keep it hot as long as I can.
He frowns, touches me again with the stick.
I peel the black skin from the soft white meat.
When Meugle smiles, my throat gluts with thanks.

* * *

He kneels and fingers my welts,
says that evil sorcery brought up the bees.
He covers me with deep handfuls of mud from the river.
Good sorcery, he says,
and as the mud dries, it draws out the sting.
But he keeps adding more. His fingers
move over me, fashion a helmet for my skull,
broaden my chest and shoulders
until I whirl away,
flinging mud and splashing up water.
Meugle crouches,
amazed at the work of his hands
as the mudman dances, impervious to pain —
and I can't tell if this is white or black magic,
his gestures to summon or ward me away.
to be picked at by gulls, will now cast up God.



IN GURU WOODS

What shape did you glimpse,
traced by light-laced branches
in the thicket's heart? A man's?
Was it just a trick of the eye?
Something conjured of the hidden
marsupial's fear, the noise of water
over the sand-bottomed creek?
Did a spirit watch at the edge
of its sight as you passed
along one path of its world?
There are so many roads into this forest,
but you can leave by just one.
Already, you are disappearing
amidst light motes, smells of pollen.
Already, you cannot remember
what you sought here, so far from home.



READ AND SAY NOTHING

What I want most — what I wish —

No. The facts — let's begin there.

My mother said "Sit. Read and say nothing."
Yes, that was it. "Sit. Read and say nothing"
and went on kneading the wash until the men
came into the yard. She smiled —
she's smiling, raising one sud-soaked hand
from the basin and he — the captain nodded —
I mean, now he is nodding —
moving his hand from his holster
and I'm reading —

What are you reading?

No. I am not reading.
The breeze lifts one edge of her skirt —

and the dozen or so policemen —
I think there must be a dozen or more —
are eyeing our pineapples and tomatoes.
I look at one word without reading
and now they are stomping downriver
in their black boots and she is plunging
her hands in the water as if to wash clean her lie.
She is what?

I'm sorry. She is washing her hands.

Continues...

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