Poetry and Transformation

Poetry and Resumen Esta narrativa, basada en la experiencia de Transformation vida del autor, se enfoca en cómo la evolu- ción de su atracción a y amor por la poesía finalmente transformó su vida. Mezclado PETER E. MURPHY con esta historia personal reveladora está el análisis del autor de cómo la relación entre poesía y fe—especialmente en la Abstract manera en que la poesía se relaciona con la This narrative, based on the life expe- Palabra Revelada—puede tener un efecto rience of the author, focuses on how his dramático en la lucha de uno por lograr evolving attraction to and love of poetry la transformación personal en medio de ultimately transformed his life. Blended circunstancias preocupantes de crisis y tu- with this revealing personal story is the multo. El autor examina además la mane- author’s assessment of how the relation- ra en que al exponerse a este arte creativo ship of poetry and faith—especially as uno puede ser asistido en comprender y poetry relates to the revealed word—can aplicar la “Palabra Creativa”. have a dramatic effect on one’s struggle for personal transformation in the midst ONE of troubling circumstances of crisis and turmoil. In addition, the author examines In the park surrounding the Imperial the manner in which exposure to this cre- War Museum in London, a large slab ative art can assist one in comprehending of concrete, twelve feet high by three and applying the “Creative Word.” feet wide, is slowly falling apart, expos- ing its skeleton of rusted steel rebar. Resumé Cet article, fondé sur le vécu de l’auteur, Despite its appearance and strength, relate comment son intérêt pour la poésie concrete is in motion. As soon as the a évolué au point que son amour de cet art molecules in the cement that bind it a fini par transformer sa vie. Parallèlement harden, they start to unfasten in a pro- à ces révélations personnelles de l’auteur, cess that can take hundreds of years. l’article évalue comment le rapport à la Poured in 1961, this slab is not old by poésie et à la foi, en particulier le rapport concrete standards and should be hold- entre la poésie et la parole révélée, peut ing up better, but it is a segment of the avoir un effet retentissant sur la lutte de Berlin Wall, which was constructed l’individu pour sa transformation person- quickly and cheaply. During the wall’s nelle alors qu’il est aux prises avec des cir- active duty, 136 people were killed constances troublantes en période de crise et de tourmente. De plus, l’auteur examine trying to cross over from East to West comment l’exposition à cet art créatif peut Germany. Before the slab was retired aider une personne à comprendre et à ap- to this beautiful park it was painted pliquer dans sa vie la « Parole créatrice ». with graffiti. In one painting, a pair of cartoon eyes overlooks a huge Rolling 8 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

Stones red tongue covered with white letters that proclaim, “Change Your Life.” The artist “Indiano,” who graf- fitied much of the Berlin Wall, likely chose these words from a sonnet by Rilke that ends with the admonition, “Du musst dein leben ändern,” or “You must change your life” (“Archaic Torso of Apollo” 14). Like concrete, poetry is also in transition—a poem is created over many revisions that can take, for me at least, decades before it is complete. Unlike concrete, a poem is bound by image and sound, metaphor and voice. A poem, as Archibald MacLeish fa- mously wrote in “Ars Poetica,” “should not mean / But be” (23-24). My own “Ars Poetica” reflects on the relation- ship between the other concrete—the one relating to the senses—and the abstract. ARS POETICA

The thin wires that brace the rods in place are not that tough as I twist them around bars of ribbed steel. And they quiver when I slurp over them tons of redi-mix.

In Cardiff, I burned a winter chopping holes through concrete. My jackhammer heated then sliced the steel, knocked loose gray chunks, snapped the slender wires like the bones of a finger.

As centuries tick, the stiff sides of buildings conceal molecules of cement unbinding into sand, aggregate, and water.

All the making becomes unmaking that implodes silently, spewing light and heat as it breaks back through the abstract. (Many Mountains Moving 93) Poetry and Transformation 9

While the abstract is the subject I say. I’d rather they argue. I need to of poetry, it is also its enemy. The ab- provoke them. stract has no flesh, no blood, no thing. “Who wants to dance?” I ask. It is soul and spirit, incomprehensible They look confused. I point to Lisa, without form. The poet’s job is to give a special education teacher in Camden. the abstract a body, which can only be She hesitates, terrified, then stands done using physical language. Poems and comes to the front of the room. are little machines made out of words. She wonders if she should have taken If the words are not the right words, oil painting instead. the machine will not work. A success- I arrange Lisa so that she is stand- ful poem will offer a different expe- ing two feet in front of me. I say, “I rience each time an attentive reader am a writer and you are my reader. Are engages with it. And without the at- you ready?” tentive reader, a poem, no matter how She nods her head. She’s game. I look well crafted, will be meaningless. As her in the eye, squeeze her hands, and William Carlos Williams portrays in say, “Don’t drink and drive.” “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” “What?” she says. “If you drink and drive,” I continue, It is difficult “you are going to crash your car and to get the news from poems kill yourself and someone else. Do you yet men die miserably every day understand?” for lack Lisa nods her head again. of what is found there. (161–65) “Did you know that in 2010, 10,228 people in the United States died in TWO drunk driving crashes? You don’t want to be one of them, do you? No, I am standing in front of a group of of course not. Do not drink and drive. teachers who want to write poetry. OK?” They have given up two weeks of Lisa giggles nervously. The other their summer vacation to attend the teachers are laughing, relieved I didn’t Artist Teacher Institute at the Rich- pick them. ard Stockton College of New Jersey, “Very good,” I say. “Lisa is my per- cosponsored by Arts Horizons and the fect reader. She gets that my story is New Jersey State Council on the Arts. factual and without ambiguity. I don’t They will write poems while others want to confuse her with metaphor. I in the institute are painting, dancing, want her to clearly understand what I and making books, collages, and dig- am writing, to consider it, and to be- ital photographs. These teachers are have accordingly.” enthusiastic, earnest, smart, and ex- I lift Lisa’s hand and point out how hausted. They write down everything we are joined. 10 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

“Your job as a writer is to connect the words I have written. with your reader. But this is nonfic- “Let’s complicate the story.” Plac- tion. How does the relationship be- ing my palms against Lisa’s palms, I tween writer and reader change when say, “Let’s make believe that Charles writing imaginatively?” has just left a party, say, in Philadel- I turn back to Lisa. “OK, let’s dance phia. He gets in his Subaru, turns on again,” I say, and I place my palms the ignition, and is driving home on against her palms. “I am going to tell the Atlantic City Expressway when he you a story. It’s a true story. I made realizes he is drunk. As the writer, I it up a long time ago. Do you believe have to describe what is going on in me?” Charles’ mind so that Lisa, the reader, Lisa, confused, smiles nervously as can understand it. If I’m successful, I move our palms around and around she will feel and think what I intend in a circle as the other teachers giggle her to feel and think. Lisa, again, is my like fourth graders. perfect reader. She has to work harder, “How shall I begin?” I say aloud. but notice how she is keeping up with “It is a dark and stormy night, and my me.” character—let’s call him Charles—is I let go of Lisa’s hands and she driving home from work when his car looks relieved and heads for her seat. breaks down. A kind stranger stops But before she gets there, I say, “Not and offers Charles a ride. Grateful, he so fast. I want you to read my poem.” gets in the car, buckles up. Charles is “Oh, no,” she complains, “can’t you not in the car very long when he re- pick on someone else?” But she turns alizes that the driver is drunk. My job back toward me and raises her hands. I as the writer is to show you, the read- raise my hands above my head and say, er, what Charles, an invention of my “Read my poem.” imagination, is seeing, thinking, and As she reaches toward my hands, I feeling.” pull them farther away. I lead Lisa in a little dance. Our “Hold still!” she demands, as if I hands are palm to palm, and as I slow- were one of her unruly students. The ly move mine around in a circle, hers other teachers laugh. move with me. “What’s wrong?” I ask the class. “Again, Lisa is my perfect reader, “Why can’t she ‘get’ my poem?” but this time, she has to work harder “She’s trying,” a teachers says, “but than when I was writing factually. I’m it’s out of reach.” not telling her what to think or what “That’s right,” I say. “Lisa is trying, to do. I am using description, narra- but my poem is too private, too per- tive, and dialogue to explore the com- sonal. It’s impossible to understand it. plex emotions that my reader can only This is a not a good poem.” understand and appreciate through I lower my hands to face level and Poetry and Transformation 11

start moving them slowly in a circle. lateral, rather than literal, thinking. It Lisa raises her hands to grab them, requires being comfortable with ambi- but mine slowly move away. Her hands guity, what Keats called ‘Negative Ca- mirror the movement of my hands. pability,’ which he defined as ‘being in Occasionally they touch, but they are uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, with- always in proximity. My hands move. out any irritable reaching after fact Hers move with mine. Our hands keep and reason’ (Keats 43). Teachers are moving. often afraid of poetry because there is “How’s this?” I ask. no answer key, and when they do teach “She’s trying,” one teacher says. it, they frequently present a poem as a “She’s almost there.” puzzle that is to be solved rather than Another says, “Even though she’s language to be experienced.” not touching, I think she’s getting it.” The teachers nod their heads. They “You’re right,” I agree. “This is a have been there. But they are here good poem, and Lisa is a good read- now, and they want to learn to read er. While she may not understand and write poetry, and to teach it so or appreciate everything the poem is that their students will not tune them offering, she is getting a lot out of it out when they do. because she is trying hard. Metaphor “I am going to recite a poem. It’s doesn’t reveal itself easily. If my poem deep—very deep,” I say dramatically. is about sorrow, perhaps this reader is I raise my hands, making an exagger- feeling one of its cousins, sadness or ated gesture, look into their eyes, and grief. If my poem is exploring spiri- say, “I am lonely.” They stare at me. tuality, perhaps the reader feels some- Nothing. I wipe my eyes as if tearful thing like devotion or reverence. E. and fake hurt feelings. “Oh, you stu- E. Cummings titled one of his early pid people, you. I poured out my soul. books, Is 5, which is the answer to the I expressed myself. I told you how I common mathematical question, ‘2+2 felt, and you just looked at me. I will equals?’ If you’re a physicist and are recite my poem again, and this time, trying to land a rocket on Jupiter, 2 I hope you will be sensitive enough to plus 2 better equal 4 or you’re going to understand it.” miss Jupiter by a billion miles. Howev- I raise my hands in an even more er, if you’re writing a poem that is try- exaggerated gesture and repeat, “I am ing to explore the universe of human lonely.” I am making a fool of myself. thought, emotion, and spirit, 2+2=5 The teachers are enjoying this, espe- will get you close enough.” cially Lisa. Lisa returns to her seat as her col- “So, what’s wrong with my poem?” leagues applaud. I ask. “This is why people, even educated Lamar, who teaches in Atlantic people, don’t read poetry. It requires City, says, “You just said how you feel, 12 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

Murph. That’s not a poem. That’s a tree . . . car. Then you hear that heart- Hallmark Card.” breaking second line and you see the “Exactly. And like most greeting tree without leaves in your backyard cards, it is clichéd and sentimental. My or in the forest, perhaps the only tree poem offers nothing original, but the without leaves, or maybe they are all greater problem is that it is abstract.” without leaves, and then the strip mall, “Abstract?” Lamar asks. “I thought car . . . car . . . tree without leaves . . . poems are supposed to be abstract.” car. The point is that you can see it, “Poems are about the great ab- and because your senses are aroused, stractions: beauty, death, failure, faith, you can also feel it. The poem has be- friendship, God, honor, loss, love, come part of you. truth, etc.; but in order to render “Poems that only express are writ- these abstractions you must use con- ten on one level. They are too accessi- crete words that appeal to the senses, ble and shallow. They are not written SSSTT.” with much attention to craft. Poets “SSSTT?” Lamar repeats. who merely express themselves wind “Yes, Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, up boring whatever audience they Taste. Everything we know, we have may have and, eventually, they bore learned through our five senses. This themselves. In his “Preface to Lyri- is the animal part of us. Once we have cal Ballads,” Wordsworth wrote that taken in the experience of the world, ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow we use our mind and our spirit to dis- of powerful feelings . . . recollected in cover and reveal thoughts and emo- tranquility’ (Lyrical Ballads 42). Recol- tions. We create the world after the lection or reflection is usually part of world allows us to know it, and we can the revision process, and that’s where only know it through the senses.” craft comes in.” I wait a moment. They are thinking “I know what revision is,” Lamar this over. says, “but what do you mean by it?” “Let me revise my poem,” I say. “I “Revision doesn’t mean to correct am a tree / without leaves.” or to fix a piece of writing. That’s The teachers make the kind of editing. Revision means to re-see. Po- sound I hear when a poem connects ems have a life cycle, just like people. with an audience. Your first draft is like a newborn baby “It’s still a bad poem, but it’s a great leaking at both ends, or as Shakespeare revision. It doesn’t tell you what to wrote in As You Like It, ‘Mewling and think or feel. It presents you with an puking, in the nurse’s arms’ (2.7.147). image that allows you to make mean- You don’t say it’s a bad baby because ing out of it. Picture the tree, perhaps it can’t walk or talk, and you don’t in your backyard, perhaps in a forest, ‘correct’ it. What do you do? You clean perhaps in a strip mall, car . . . car . . . it up and you love it. This is revision, Poetry and Transformation 13

and as you revise, your poem grows secret forces you to write close to the smarter and stronger. It begins to bone, creating a sense of intimacy that walk and gets in trouble. When it tries will connect with your reader. The to stick its fingers into the wall socket, lie—by which I mean, use your imag- you have to discipline your poem and ination—cloaks anything too private say, ‘No.’ As you continue revising, the with something fanciful. This is what poem grows into adolescence, becomes leads to discovery and surprise. And rebellious and says ‘no’ to you. Maybe to paraphrase Frost, if there’s no sur- you’ve written fifteen drafts, maybe prise in the writer, there’s no surprise you’ve written fifty. Robert Hayden in the reader. You want your read- wrote almost one hundred drafts of er to discover something new when “Those Winter Sundays.” If you work they read your poem. Otherwise why hard and are patient and lucky, your should they bother? poem might become an adult and go “Does anyone else have a question?” out into the world and be published. “So, Murph,” Lamar asks, picking Then it will take care of you when you up his notebook, “how did you become are old, can’t walk, can’t talk, and are a poet?” leaking at both ends.” It is lunchtime. Time to break. THREE “OK, let me give you an assignment. I want you to write a lousy first draft. My father, Eddie Murphy, was prob- Can you do that?” ably the only longshoreman in New They laugh. “We can do that, York City who aspired to perform at Murph,” Lamar says. Carnegie Hall. Although he attend- “Write a poem that questions some- ed high school for just a few months thing you believe in. Include in it an before his father pulled him out to office supply and the title of a song. work on the docks—it was the De- Also tell a secret and tell a lie, and nev- pression—he loved classical music er tell anyone which is which.” and saved enough to buy a used piano, “What?” they shout in unison. which he stuffed into his bedroom in “Forget the office supply and song a small apartment overlooking 18th for a moment,” Lisa complains. “You Street and 10th Avenue. After World want me to tell a secret?” War II broke out, he enlisted in the “Yes. Any other questions?” army and was stationed in Newport, “But a secret?” Lisa interrupts. Wales, unloading ships that fueled She’s not going to let me get away the D-Day invasion. When one of his with this. “That’s something you don’t longshoreman buddies discovered that tell anyone. Why would you ask us to a nearby pub, the Windsor Castle Ho- do that?” tel, had classical music, Eddie stopped “I’ve also asked you to tell a lie. The in. He was disappointed that the music 14 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

was recorded, not live, but when the me because I didn’t know how to make beautiful young woman behind the my bed. One night at dinner, she beat bar asked what he wanted to drink, he me again to make me eat sweet pota- didn’t want classical music anymore. toes that were nauseating me. When He wanted her. I vomited them up on my plate, she Thelma Elias Samuel lived in a made me eat that too. After relatives in tiny room in a tower at the top of the Queens took us in and sent us to a pub- pub managed by her older sister and lic school, I thought they had changed brother-in-law. Eddie asked Thelma my religion from Catholic to Public. I to go to the cinema with him, but she didn’t know what sins the Publics be- refused. He persisted for months until lieved in and was afraid of accidently she finally gave in, and they became committing a Public sin and winding engaged in May 1944, a few weeks be- up in Public Hell. A few years later fore D-Day. Eddie stormed Normandy at another Catholic school, a popular and survived, but he was wounded in priest invited me to his rectory office Belgium a few months later and sent on Saturday mornings. After locking home. After the war, he returned to the door, he wrestled with me. At first, Wales to marry Thelma. They moved he let me win, but then he “wrestled” to New York, where my older brother dirty, and I felt dirty, but he said it was born in 1948, and Eddie made the wasn’t dirty and not to tell anyone, transition from working on the wa- so I didn’t tell anyone. But I felt dirty terfront to operating cranes and other anyway and knew I was going to Hell. heavy equipment in the city’s booming At fifteen, I decided that I could re- construction industry. Thelma wasn’t main a Catholic or I could be happy. I happy being so far from her family, so decided to be happy, and stopped trying they moved back to Newport, where to believe. I started writing poetry, and I was born in 1950. She wasn’t happy I started drinking. I drank at parties living so close to her family, so we re- and started hanging out with friends. turned to New York. Then we returned Then I started drinking alone. My fa- to Newport. Then back to New York. I ther had remarried, and my religious crossed the Atlantic three times in my stepmother put coins under the stat- first three years. Thelma, unhappy in uettes in her bedroom, which I tapped Wales, unhappy in the United States, each month for drinking money. While finally took her life when I was seven. the lesser saints might only have a Because my father couldn’t take nickel or a dime, St. Christopher, her care of us, my brother and I got favorite, was good for a quarter, and moved around, attending four differ- the Virgin Mary usually gave up fifty ent elementary schools. At a boarding cents. Not much, but a quart of beer school on Staten Island, a nun made cost only thirty-five cents back then. me take off my clothes before beating While she usually caught me doing Poetry and Transformation 15

other things, she never questioned me record. I was proud of myself. Then about the statuette’s money. I think I started drinking again, and “It can’t she believed that the saints accepted get any worse!” got worse. I was edi- her gifts to buy whatever extras they tor of the yearbook and kept the dark- might need in Heaven. room refrigerator stocked with beer Two years later, I decided I could be purchased with money from selling happy or I could be a poet, so I chose yearbook subscriptions, which I failed to be a poet. I hadn’t read much poetry to repay because I was fired from my and didn’t know of any poets except after-school job for showing up drunk. for Dylan Thomas, famous for being After high school I flunked out of three Welsh, for being drunk, and for dying colleges in three semesters. The only young. My man! I believed that living decent grade I earned was in a theol- life gritty would make me a better ogy class, where I wrote a paper on poet. If I experienced all aspects of poetry and religion. I used examples the world, I could better express my from Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti, and oth- feelings about it. When I came across er “Beats” to argue that religion was Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”—so honest- choking society while poetry opened a ly degenerate, so morally depraved, so conduit of human thought, emotion, human—I could feel a heart beating in and spirit that not only liberated the every line. poet but would also unite people in an My father, a drinker himself, re- enlightened community. ferred to New Year’s Eve as “Amateur I stopped using capital letters in my Night,” and as a senior in high school, writing because I thought they were I was an amateur on New Year’s Eve unjust. Why should one word be cap- 1968. I didn’t remember much, but italized and not another? The names what I did remember, shooting heroin, of days and months are capitalized, terrified me. Here’s the conclusion of but the names of the seasons aren’t. a poem I wrote. Shouldn’t they be equal? I also didn’t use punctuation. Instead, I left a small There’s more here, living, than space where a comma should be and a to meet at the bar. longer space for a period. Surprisingly, If I can go straight for a little my professor, a Franciscan Priest, ig- while, nored that. Who knows? My brother was serving in Viet- Better things may come and I nam. I wanted to support him, but as May find them. the war went on I couldn’t see that it It can’t get any worse! had any purpose. I marched in demon- (unpublished manuscript) strations, but when fights broke out on a picket line at the Washington Monu- I didn’t drink for three weeks, a ment, I realized that protesting wasn’t 16 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

the answer. Trouble is, I didn’t know received a note from Howard Moss, what was. who encouraged me to write more and After college number three let me to try him again. I didn’t realize how go, I decided to be near what I loved, rare it was to get a personal note from which was drinking, and got a job the poetry editor of the New Yorker. tending bar at a night club in Queens. I I tried a few more times, and How- took writing workshops at the YMCA ard Moss continued to write person- on 92nd Street with two well-known al notes, but my poems were getting poets and usually showed up sober, worse, not better, and eventually I but not sober enough to learn any- gave up. God bless you, Howard Moss. thing. I read poetry, but not enough to You tried. understand anything. I worked on my At nineteen I got engaged to a poems, but not enough to make them young woman who was in worse shape any better. Despite this lack of effort, than I was. She came into the club I considered myself a poet. When I where I worked a few days after she read at an open mic at a bar in Man- was released from rehab, where she’d hattan, a drunk yelled, “Take it all off !” kicked her heroin habit, and both our Obviously, he knew I was an imposter. lives spiraled downhill from there. I I wrote a series of “bar” poems. This tried to break it off, but I kept going one, perhaps, was the most successful. back. Break off. Go back. Break off. Go back. This lasted almost two years FLORIDA (FOR RATSO) before I realized I would have to go far away to get away. Although I was A man fainted tonight. born in Wales, I didn’t know anything I asked him to get up—nothing. about it. I had no other ideas, so I got a I loosened his collar and placed passport, quit my job, and on Septem- ammonia under his nose. ber 11, 1971, a week before my twen- His shoes came off and then some. ty-first birthday, I took off. I stayed in His wallet told me nothing. the British Isles for almost a year. It I kicked him— was the smartest thing I’d ever done He ignored me. in my stupid life. I lay down next to him As I was hitchhiking in West Wales, demanding that he listen to reason. a driver dropped me off in a village I put my head on his chest. whose name I could not pronounce and told me the locals recited poetry I lay there, still there at night. The pub was noisy. A waiting. dozen men were arguing in Welsh. (unpublished manuscript) They stopped as I walked to the bar. Welsh nationalists had been trying to I sent it to the New Yorker and preserve their native language from Poetry and Transformation 17

becoming extinct and their culture A few months later, December from becoming diluted by England, 1971, I was hitchhiking through Lon- their powerful neighbor to the east. donderry so unaware of my surround- While a few protests were violent— ings that I didn’t realize Northern most notably an attempted bombing to Ireland was at war. This was a month disrupt the investiture of the Prince or so before “Bloody Sunday,” when of Wales in 1969—most were peace- soldiers shot twenty-six people during ful. A popular strategy was painting a peaceful demonstration, killing four- over English street signs so non- teen of them. I wanted to head down Welsh drivers would get lost. to Limerick to see what I could find “May I have a pint, please?” out about the “limericks.” I got a ride The man behind the bar didn’t from two men in a three-wheeled milk move. There was something Dodge truck; they agreed to take me to the City about this place, and it was as if I Irish border near Donegal. From there had walked in wearing a black hat. it was a straight run down the coast. “Where are you from, lad?” The men were angry, but because their I turned around. One of the men brogues were so thick, I wasn’t sure stood there. why, until finally I understood: that “New York,” I answered. morning in the Bogside, the Catholic “You’re American?” neighborhood where they lived, sol- “Yes.” diers had shot two of their friends. “You’re not English?” All over the city were barriers If I knew better, I would have said, manned by British soldiers armed “Screw the English.” Instead, I said, with automatic weapons. Each time “No, American.” we came to one—and they were fre- “What are you doing in Wales?” quent—the driver cursed at the sol- “Hitchhiking around. I heard you diers who studied us as we drove might have a poetry reading tonight.” slowly around a maze and over speed “So you like poetry?” bumps. When we reached the last of “Yes.” these barricades, kids began throwing He hesitated, looked around, made rocks at the soldiers who were lifting a decision, and said, “OK. We need to their weapons. The driver sped up—to finish our business, and then we’ll give distract them? To take the fire? I didn’t you some poetry. Shouldn’t be long.” know—and he ran the maze at thirty He went back to the other men, and miles an hour instead of the posted they resumed arguing. I turned around five. When I heard gunfire I hunkered and there was a pint of beer on the bar. down, trying to make myself as small I didn’t know what they were arguing a target as possible. While I didn’t about, but I had a feeling it was about believe in God, I am sure I must have more than spray-painting street signs. prayed. The driver stopped his truck 18 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

a few miles down the road, pointed to a rocket ship or that the halo around the west, and said, “Run!” the babe in the manger was a space I ran. helmet. I told him what happened in Safely over the border in the Repub- Londonderry, and we both agreed the lic of Ireland, I dropped my backpack world would be better without reli- and allowed myself to feel both fear gion. Mathew and I recognized each and anger. I thought it unfair to be other as outsiders. Neither of us was shot at in a war that had nothing to happy with our lives, our families, our do with me, a war I didn’t even know societies. We wanted lives that made was going on. And how stupid! Both sense, lives that connected and had sides were killing each other over a meaning. We probably listened to too God that didn’t exist. While I didn’t much John Lennon, who was at the top know much about it, I could appreciate of the charts, the war two years earlier between the Muslims and the Jews because they be- Imagine there’s no heaven lieved in different Gods. Catholics and It’s easy if you try Protestants believed in the same one. ... They are on the same team. Obviously, Imagine all the people I was unaware of the Reformation and Sharing all the world. the long history of hatred between (“Imagine”) them. Then I had an idea. “Why are we killing each other because of our As Mathew left to sketch in front of religions, our nationalities, our races? the church, I went in pursuit of the Why can’t we see that we’re all human limerick, which took me to an old beings?” I’m brilliant! I thought. I had two-story building. On one floor was a an original idea. I knew it was original library and the other a museum, both because I’d never heard it before. Then tended by a little old lady who had I found a pub and drowned my origi- never heard of limericks. “Can you re- nal idea and my brilliance. cite one for me?” she asked. The only I checked in at the youth hostel in ones I could think of were too dirty, Limerick, where I met a young Dub- so I said no and left. I wandered down liner named Mathew Kennedy. He was to the River Shannon and sat on the a sidewalk artist who set up outside St. bank looking at the water. The river Augustine’s Church and sketched na- was beautiful, in a gray, ashy kind of tivity scenes with chalk. He despised way. The sky was gray too, and the what he called the “old fakers” who air reeked of smoke from coal fires flocked into the church to make deals used to heat the houses. I liked the with God. Unless you looked closely smell. I was a city kid. Growing up in at his sketches, you wouldn’t notice New York, my only experience with that the tree in the background was anything close to a countryside was Poetry and Transformation 19

the occasional expedition into Cen- strange—“The Emperor of Ice tral Park, where, once, while playing Cream,” “The Man on the Dump,” “An- softball (drunk, of course), I fell into ecdote of the Jar,” “Disillusionment of a manhole. However, since traveling Ten O’Clock,” and my favorite, “Thir- in the United Kingdom and Ireland, I teen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” was beginning to like nature. The imagery fascinated me: “I was of The first person to take me seri- three minds, / Like a tree / In which ously as a poet was Hubert Babinski, a there are three blackbirds” (3-6). professor at college number two, who I think I liked Williams’ poems most encouraged me not just to write but to of all. They didn’t have the flashiness read poetry. He introduced me to the of Hopkins’ language or the mystery poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, of Stevens’ imagery, but I felt I un- Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos derstood them in a more organic way. Williams. I read Hopkins’ poems over In his poem, “The Manoeuvre,” while and over. I didn’t like that they were watching starlings land on telephone religious, but his poems were wild, wires on a windy day, Williams inter- and when I read “Pied Beauty,” “The rupts himself to say, “that’s what got Windhover,” and “God’s Grandeur” me—to / face into the wind’s teeth” aloud, my mouth was happy. (7-8). “[T]hat’s what got me—” he wrote like I talked. I didn’t know poet- And for all this, nature is never ry could do that! spent; Hubert told me that these artists’ There lives the dearest poems were driven by sound and im- freshness deep down things; age compared to Ferlinghetti and And though the last lights of the Ginsburg, who used narrative to move black West went their poems. I hadn’t thought about Oh, morning, at the brown “moving” a poem before. I just wrote brink eastward, springs— what was floating around in my head. Because the Holy Ghost over the I read these poems repeatedly, try- bent ing to make sense of them in those World broods with warm rare periods when I wasn’t drunk. breast and with ah! bright Hubert helped me see where my own wings. (“God’s Grandeur” 9–14) poems were original and interesting, and where they were not. I realized I loved that “ah!” stopping the flow that the poems I wrote while high of the poem to emphasize the last were not as good as I’d hoped. This two words, “Bright wings.” I wished I troubled me. How could I “expand my could buy a pair. I didn’t understand consciousness” if the poems I wrote Stevens, but I loved the authority of while stoned weren’t as good as the his voice, and his titles were brilliantly ones I wrote when straight? One of 20 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

my efforts, written under the influence, was Wordsworth. He looked old. I made a gerund out of every word. picked up a book and read that he had died in 1850. Wordsworth is one of Driving toing Buffaloing those dead poets I despised without alonging theing Newing Yorking ever having read. That stupid shep- Thruwaying . . . herd tricked me, I thought, so who’s (unpublished manuscript) the stupid one? I bought the cheapest book there, A When I told Hubert I was going Choice of Wordsworth’s Verse, for sixty to Wales, he suggested that I stop at pence, and hiked back to Ambleside. the Lake District if I found myself in I read all the poems in the book, and Northern England. I planned to stay everything did a flip-flop because I there one night on my way up to Loch loved Wordsworth. I was shocked. He Ness to look for the monster. After wrote mostly about nature, but that’s checking into the hostel at Ambleside, not really what he was writing about. I met a shepherd who asked me what He was writing about emotions that I I did. I said, “I am a poet,” which is a recognized: joy, excitement, fear, won- ridiculous thing to say, especially to a der, despair. stranger. Some of the poems, such as “Mi- “A poet, are you?” he said. “What chael,” “Nutting,” and “She was a do you think of our poet, William Phantom of Delight,” were about peo- Wordsworth?” ple very different than me, but I felt “Never heard of him.” like I knew them. I was moved most by “Never heard of him? Well then,” a poem about Tintern Abbey in Wales. the shepherd said, “you should go pay Wordsworth was trying to relive the him a visit.” excitement of his first visit there five “Where does he live?” years earlier: “Walk along this path. His house is just a bit down the road in Grasmere.” I came among these hills; when I decided to visit this William like a roe Wordsworth. Maybe he would offer I bounded o’er the mountains, by me a cup of tea and a biscuit. I walked the sides “a bit down the road,” which turned Of the deep rivers, and the lonely out to be three miles, when I saw a streams, sign saying “Wordsworth Cottage.” Wherever nature led: more like Wow, I thought, intimidated, he’s got a man a sign. Inside, a woman welcomed Flying from something that he me. Was this Mrs. Wordsworth? The dreads, than one walls were full of books for sale and Who sought the thing he loved. . . pictures of somebody whom I figured (“Tintern Abbey” 68-73) Poetry and Transformation 21

Traveling alone through Wales and sacredness of the ordinary. Williams the Lake District, I realized how much wrote, “No ideas but in things” (“Pa- I liked nature; no, it was more than terson” 15). He probably would not nature—it was the whole universe of have gotten there if Wordsworth what I had been seeing, hearing, smell- hadn’t come up with “whereby ordi- ing, and feeling but did not have the nary things should be presented to the language to understand. Wordsworth mind in an unusual aspect” (“Preface was giving me that language, and I to Lyrical Ballads”). loved him for it. Forget the Loch Ness monster, I When I read “Intimations of Im- thought, as my one day in the Lake mortality,” I recognized the phrase, District turned into a three-week “The child is father of the man,”1 and excursion. I walked, as Wordsworth realized that Al Kooper from Blood, walked, from Ambleside to Grasmere Sweat, and Tears was quoting Word- to Cockermouth to Coniston to Hawk- sworth when he used it as the title of shead to Kendal to Rydall Mount and the band’s first album. Al Kooper and back to Ambleside, all the while read- Wordsworth—amazing. I connected ing and rereading his poems. I felt as to a nature poet dead 120 years and though my brain was getting bigger, wondered how this could happen. I the opposite of blacking out after walked back to Grasmere the next drinking, which I was trying to do less morning and put down three pounds, and less. Back in Grasmere, I wrote fifty pence—half my weekly budget— a nine-page elegy to Wordsworth, on Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, the longest poem I had ever written. and read them and reread them. I was “Eight Yew Trees” was set in the excited as Wordsworth ranted against cemetery where he planted them and the “vicious poetic diction” of the past, where he, his wife, his sister, and a few while pledging to bring his own lan- of his children were buried. My poem guage near to the language of men: concludes, “an indistinct perception perpetually renewed of language closely resem- . . . Your place is simple, bling that of real life” (Lyrical Ballads A monument of stone 42). I didn’t realize how radical this Chipped from local rock was at the time, but it’s this kind of by a local craftsman boldness that attracted me to poetry Who knew your disdain for in the first place. Reading the preface public sepulchers reminded me of the poems I read by And what could not compare William Carlos Williams, which were To yew tree memorials also written the way people speak. as lasting as your poems. Both poets seemed to celebrate the (unpublished manuscript) 1 A Choice of Wordsworth’s Verse, p. 91. 22 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

This was strange. I wasn’t writ- but they were so nice. They said they ing about myself. I was writing about had a new religion and that there were someone else’s suffering and how, de- fifty of them in the world. Or maybe spite the decomposition of the body, it they said there were fifty in Ireland or might be possible through language to Limerick? I don’t know, but they gave live on after death—what Wordsworth me this card and invited me to come to was obsessed with: immortality. a meeting tomorrow.” Limerick was not a beautiful city, We studied the card, which had a but the river, the sky, the buildings, the handwritten quotation neither of us coal smoke—I was overcome. A great could understand. and brutal weight had been lifted from “It’s a religion,” I said. “They’ll just me. Like Wordsworth encountering start another war.” a supernatural presence on Mount After thinking about it, Mathew Snowdon, I felt something breath- said, “Yes, Peter, but there’s only fifty. taking and magical at the bank of Maybe we can talk them out of it.” the River Shannon, something much “Maybe,” I said, “they’ll offer us a greater than anything human I had cup of tea.” come across. I didn’t know the word Then I showed Mathew my poem “awesome,” but that’s what it was. I about the Holy Spirit. “It’s astonish- took out my notebook and wrote, ing,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean. There’s something profound Here, Holy Spirit. about Limerick. Maybe this new reli- There, Holy Spirit. gion has something to do with it.” Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. Something was profound about Sea gulls, Holy Spirit. Limerick. Five years earlier, a young Gray sky, Holy Spirit. woman from Belfast, Lesley Gibson Coal smoke, Holy Spirit. (Taherzadeh), had moved in, becom- Rocks, cars, dogs. ing the first Bahá’í to live there. She Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. worked as a speech therapist at a hospi- (unpublished manuscript) tal for children with special needs. She was joined a few months later by Gil- Like Hopkins, I had written a poem lian Phillips from Wales. The Catholic about the Holy Ghost, a religious Church was the law of the land, and poem. What kind of atheist was I? I Lesley and Gillian didn’t want to stir wanted to see if Mathew could make up trouble, so they lived quiet Bahá’í sense of it. Before I could show him lives. They prayed together, made my poem, he said, “Peter, I met these friends, and gradually introduced people, and something amazing hap- their new friends to the Bahá’í Faith. pened. I wasn’t very polite to them Another Bahá’í, Stanley Wrout, moved when they said they liked my drawing, to Limerick from England in 1970, Poetry and Transformation 23

but he drowned just three months af- then I noticed three older women and ter settling in. His death galvanized thought, no, they can’t be high, not Gillian and Lesley, who met every with the old ladies around. Tuesday evening in a “fireside,” and I sat on the floor and asked a guy prayed that others might attend. As next to me, “What’s this about?” more Bahá’ís from the United States “The Earth is one country,” he said, and the British Isles moved to Lim- “and mankind its citizens.” erick, they formed a Local Spiritual “What?” I said, startled. “That’s my Assembly in April 1971. One Tuesday idea. I thought of it last week. Where night Lesley’s fireside was inundated did you get it from?” by a group of longhaired young peo- “Bahá’u’lláh wrote it over a hundred ple who were part of a band, “Jeremi- years ago.” ah Henry.” that was popular in Ireland “Who?” I didn’t understand what at the time. They all became Bahá’ís he said. With his brogue, it sounded that night. When Mathew met Lesley to me like “Bahooligan.” I asked him on the street two months later, there to repeat the name several times but were fifty Bahá’ís in Limerick. Soon still didn’t get it, so I called his guy there would be hundreds. the “Big B.” As more locals became Bahá’ís, He said that Bahá’u’lláh was the there was a backlash from the clergy, fulfillment of each of the world’s re- who preached against it from their ligions, not just Christianity, but Ju- pulpits. This actually helped spread daism, Islam, Hindu, and Buddhism awareness of the Faith. When one as well. “Bahá’ís believe in bringing young woman told her grandmother the world together and eliminating she had become a Bahá’í, she respond- prejudice.” ed, “Oh yes, I heard about them. They This can’t be a religion, I thought. seem nice.” Another young woman It makes too much sense. When I ar- became a Bahá’í when her friends did. gued that religion causes more wars After her parish priest confronted her than it prevents, he told me that ‘Ab- and demanded that she give it up, she du’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, said decided to think for herself, remained that if two people are arguing about a Bahá’í, and was the first pioneer to religion, they’re both wrong. the city of Wexford. Limerick was on “If this faith becomes the source of fire, a Bahá’í fire, and while we didn’t disunity it should be disbanded.” realize it, Mathew and I were about to “You’re kidding.” be touched by its flames. “No.” When we arrived at the house the “But you believe in God, right? next day, we found a mob of young That can’t be good.” people there. They all seemed so hap- “The Bahá’í concept,” he explained, py, I thought they were on drugs. But “is that God is an unknowable essence. 24 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

No matter what we say about Him, widow of a famous Bahá’í the group Her, or It, it’s just our imagination. referred to as a “Hand of the Cause.”2 We can only know what the Manifes- “What happened to the rest of tations tell us.” him?” I asked. “Manifestations?” The women laughed. Not bad, I “Yes, messengers like Moses, Je- thought. If these Bahá’ís could smile sus, and Mohammed. They’re like the when someone makes fun of them, lamps, and God’s message is the light. maybe they won’t start a war. Then It’s renewed every time a new Mani- she called the meeting to order, picked festation comes. The spiritual teach- up a prayer book, and began to read. ings are the same, but the social teach- “Is there any Remover of difficul- ings change according to the needs of ties save God? Say: Praised be God! society.” He is God! All are His servants, and all When he mentioned the oneness abide by His bidding!” (Bahá’í Prayers of religion, I remembered getting in 28). trouble when I was eight years old for I was horrified. I was usually the attending a Cub Scouts meeting held “difficulty.” Was this Bahá’í God going in the basement of a Lutheran church. to “remove” me? Would I be sucked When he mentioned the oneness of up by a giant vacuum cleaner in the mankind, I remembered the pastor of sky? Would I just disappear? Praying my church speaking out from the pul- was stupid, a waste of time. When I pit against a “Negro” family that had was a kid I knelt against my bed each moved into the neighborhood. When night reading psalms aloud. I prayed he said that each person must inves- for things. I prayed to be happy, and it tigate and decide whether the Bahá’í didn’t work. But when I listened to the Faith is true, I believed it was true. At Bahá’í prayers, I was surprised by the least I wanted it to be true. But when beauty of the words, and then some- he said that Bahá’ís don’t do drugs or one recited this one: drink alcohol, I knew I couldn’t be a Bahá’í. While I hadn’t done drugs for O Lord! We are weak; strengthen a while, I drank alcohol, and I didn’t us. O God! We are ignorant; make want to be a hypocrite. And while the us knowing. O Lord! We are poor; Bahá’í God made more sense than the make us wealthy. O God! We are god I didn’t believe in, I wasn’t ready 2 There is no clergy in the Bahá’í to abandon my life of nonbelief. Faith. Hands of the Cause were chosen One of the American women, Hort- by Bahá’u’lláh and His successors to both ense Bredehorst, welcomed Mathew promulgate and protect the Faith in its and me to her home and introduced early days until its “Supreme Body,” The her two housemates, Mary Lou Mar- Universal House of Justice, could be es- tin and Doris Holley. Doris was the tablished which occurred in 1963. Poetry and Transformation 25

dead; quicken us. O Lord! We are week. Mathew and I returned to the humiliation itself; glorify us in Bahá’í house every day, asking more Thy Kingdom. If Thou dost as- questions, trying to understand the an- sist us, O Lord, we shall become swers. We spent all night at the hostel as scintillating stars. If Thou dost talking about it. When the book finally not assist us, we shall become arrived, I didn’t understand many of lower than the earth. O Lord! the English words, and I was confused Strengthen us. O God! Confer by the Persian ones. However, I knew victory upon us. O God! Enable us that the Bahá’í book was important, so to conquer self and overcome de- I wrapped it in plastic and kept it safe sire. O Lord! Deliver us from the in my backpack. After saying goodbye bondage of the material world. to Mathew, I left Limerick for Cork, O Lord! Quicken us through the where I had been invited to a Bahá’í breath of the Holy Spirit in order fireside. that we may arise to serve Thee, At the youth hostel in Cork I met a engage in worshiping Thee and guy who told me that this Bahá’í Faith exert ourselves in Thy Kingdom couldn’t be any good if they believed with the utmost sincerity. O Lord, in Muslims. “They’re murderers,” he Thou art powerful. O God, Thou said. “Stay away from them.” He told art forgiving. O Lord, Thou art me about the Crusades and about the compassionate. (Promulgation 457) evil things they did, and I was con- fused. If the Bahá’í God said that I was weak. I was ignorant. I was Muslims were OK, then how could poor. And much of the time, especial- they be murderers? ly when drinking, I was “humiliation I was the only non-Bahá’í at the itself.” How did this Bahá’í God know fireside. They referred to me as a that? He wrote this prayer for me, “seeker.” I had never thought of my- especially the sentence, “O God! En- self that way, but when I heard the able us to conquer self and overcome word, it kind of made sense. A special desire.” guest, who had come down from Dún I needed a drink. Laoghaire to speak, asked me if I had Instead, I asked if they had books I any questions. I told him what the guy could read. They said they would get in the hostel said and asked, “Do you one from Dublin. I was only planning know anything about Muslims?” to be in Limerick a few days, but I de- His name was Adib Taherzadeh cided to wait for it. Despite the fact and he knew quite a lot about Islam. that the Bahá’ís believed in God, and In fact, he said that his family had been prayed, and didn’t drink, I wanted it Muslims but had become Bahá’í in Iran to be true. In fact, I made believe that when Bahá’u’lláh was alive. I didn’t I was a Bahá’í and didn’t drink that entirely understand what that meant, 26 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

but I felt something powerful, as if I Morgan from Caerphilly. I had been had shaken the hand of the hand that drinking the first time I went looking had shaken the hand of Jesus.3 for a job, and at a construction site, I I left that night convinced that walked across freshly poured concrete. whatever problems Christians might The next day, sober, I was hired as a la- have about Islam, they weren’t prob- borer on a construction site at Cardiff lems for me. The Bahá’í Faith made University. I was to be paid forty-two sense. Too bad Bahá’ís believed in and a half pence—about a dollar—an God. Too bad Bahá’ís prayed. Too bad hour. However, because I didn’t have Bahá’ís didn’t drink. I liked Bahá’í and Garry Morgan’s tax records, fifty per- probably believed it, but I knew I could cent emergency taxes were to be with- never live a Bahá’í life for more than a held until I produced them. few days. My boss, Nobby, asked each payday, “Do you have those tax records yet?” FOUR “Not yet,” I answered, sometimes forgetting my faux Welsh accent. After spending the Christmas holidays “You sound American,” he said one with my recently discovered family in time. Wales, I wound up living in a commune “Uh . . . I lived in Canada for a of sorts in a working-class neighbor- while,” I bluffed. He knew I was lying, hood in Cardiff. The terraced house but he didn’t press me. Sometimes I had four bedrooms on two floors, one forgot my assumed name and when bathroom, and between fifteen and Nobby called “Garry, Garry, GAR- twenty people and two dogs crashing RY!” I forgot to answer. When they there at any given time. Among us hired another laborer named Peter, I were two runaways, a fifteen-year-old really messed up. Nobby called “Hey, girl who’d fled the Troubles in Belfast, Peter,” and we both answered. Again, and a sixteen-year-old Moroccan girl he let it slide. hiding from her family in Cardiff to My job was to haul stuff from one avoid forced marriage to an uncle. The place to another and clean what Nobby others were a mix of Welsh and En- told me to clean, until one day when glish, collecting seven pounds a week Nobby pointed me to a jackhammer on the dole, which they used to get and my life became hell. I drilled holes stoned. through the concrete floor so they I needed a job, so I bought a work- could install the pipes and wires that ing card that said my name was Garry made the building hum. After working 3 Adib Taherzadeh went on to become ten-hour shifts six days a week, all I a member of the Universal House of Jus- could do at night was sit in a chair and tice on which he served from 1988 to his shake, my beer spilling down my chin. death in 2000. I was drinking more and more and Poetry and Transformation 27

getting more and more depressed. questions and didn’t force anything on I was too broke to quit my job and me except tea and biscuits. They made too broken to keep working. Hubert me feel a better person than I really Babinski had written that he would be was, and that I could make a difference. in Prague in the spring, and I wanted It was March, and Viv was fasting to meet him there, but when I contact- during daylight hours, something I ed the Czech embassy, they told me I didn’t understand. On my second visit, would have to prove I had money, ho- I stayed too late to catch the bus back tel reservations, and transportation in to Cardiff, so they invited me to sleep order to get a visa. I had none. over. This was the first time in months Meanwhile, conditions at the house, I’d had a bed to myself, so I welcomed which were never great, were dete- it. I also wanted to see if Viv was riorating. We slept in shifts, three or really going to get up before sunrise four in a bed at a time, and were all to eat breakfast. infected by lice. We went to the clin- I was awakened before six as he ic where we were given a humiliating was making tea in the nearby kitchen. lecture on personal hygiene complete Soon Rita joined us and we ate an early with leaflets and individual bottles of breakfast together. shampoo laced with DDT. There was “Let’s say some prayers, now, all little money for food and few coins to right?” feed the meter that sparked the “elec- “Uh . . . OK,” I said reluctantly. tric fire” in the living room that heated “Blessed is the spot,” Viv began. the rest of the house. Two women, Then Rita read the “Remover of girls really, had miscarriages in a two- Difficulties,” and I had that feeling week period. One night, an irate father again, that I would be removed. I forced his way in the front door and didn’t read a prayer when asked. I dragged his naked daughter out by the didn’t want to be a hypocrite. hair. Turns out, he was high up in the “Peter,” Viv said, “we’re having a Cardiff Constabulary, and after that, a meeting next Sunday with a speaker police car remained parked in front of from London. Why don’t you join us?” the house. “I’m not sure,” I said, not wanting I wondered if there were Bahá’ís to commit, not wanting to get too in South Wales. Looking through the close to the Bahá’ís, afraid they were phone directory, I was surprised to rubbing off on me. However, Viv and find a Bahá’í couple in Newport, the Rita were so kind to me, I didn’t want city where I was born. Viv and Rita to disappoint them, so before I left, I Bartlett welcomed me as if I were a said I’d be there. younger brother. Viv was a teacher, and Back in Cardiff, I was miserable. Rita, pregnant with their first child, Exhausted from the jackhammer, I quit was a puppeteer. They answered my my job and spent the week getting as 28 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

drunk as possible. The police in front This time I am alone. of the house taunted us, saying they This time I am alone. were going to close the place down and This time it is a river. put us all in jail. Because my visa had This time an inlet. expired months earlier, I knew I would Waters rush through me. be deported. Although I had a return A disorganized river. ticket to New York, I didn’t want to This proof. go home. In addition to the fiancé I didn’t want to marry, I was estranged This time I wake in the Chevy. from my father and stepmother, and I My salmon face rises in the had left behind a heap of debt I didn’t mirror. This time an ocean. know how to pay off. I couldn’t stay The days crash over me. in Cardiff, and I couldn’t go back to My name is Not Yet. New York, so I drank and got drunk. My name is Almost. Drank and got drunk. I finally decided My name is About to. to jump off a building. Then I thought (Stubborn Child 19) I should get my ear pierced instead. Then I thought maybe I should become I did not want to move. I did not a Bahá’í. Suicide, ear pierced, become a want to get up. I did not want to go Bahá’í: each made as much sense as the to the Bahá’í meeting, but I had given next. I was twenty-one years old, and Viv and Rita my word. I managed to my life was over. I drank harder. stand, then stumbled into the house When I woke up on Sunday and collapsed on the couch, which, morning I thought I was drowning. surprisingly, had no one else crashing Actually, it was raining, and I was on it. When I felt I could walk without lying in the gutter outside the house. falling, I climbed the steps, put on dry I was, once again, “humiliation itself.” clothes, went back out in the rain and Decades later I would write this poem: walked to the stop to catch the bus to Newport and was soaked again. BAPTISM The meeting was on the second floor of a building in the middle of the city, This time I wake under a bridge. not far from the Windsor Castle Hotel My ochre face rises in the rear where my parents had met and where view mirror like a jaundiced sun. I had lived as a baby, not far from St. This time my trousers are damp. Mary’s Catholic Church where they This time my trousers are dry. were married and I was baptized. I This time I wake in a gutter. didn’t know how long the meeting Rain flows around me. would go on, but I figured I could take off around eleven, when the pubs Poetry and Transformation 29

opened. The speaker from London was The Bahá’ís are trying to rescue peo- Phillip Hinton. He was going on, but ple, and there you are safe and sound I couldn’t follow what he was saying. watching us from up the mountain. If He had a funny accent, not quite Brit- you believe in Bahá’u’lláh, then you ish, but close enough. I learned later need to help us change the world. You that he was from South Africa. When need to become a Bahá’í.” he finished, I had fulfilled my obliga- My stomach was roiling, my head tion to Viv and Rita and was about pounding, and I was chilled from to leave when they asked me to stay sleeping in the rain. I needed a drink, for a cup of tea. I had the shakes and and the pubs were now open. But this needed to get a real drink, but before I man had just told me that if I be- could say no thanks, Hinton came over lieved in Bahá’u’lláh, I should become and asked, “What do you think of the a Bahá’í. Whenever I thought of the Bahá’í Faith?” future, all I thought about was what I “It makes sense,” I said. would stock in my liquor cabinet and “Do you believe Bahá’u’lláh is God’s how I would pay for it. But I had cut latest Manifestation?” back in the Lake District, and I didn’t “No . . . I’m not sure . . . I think so . . . drink for a week in Limerick. Maybe maybe . . . I don’t know . . . probably . . .” I could do it. My shaking got worse Rita handed me a cup of tea. and my tea spilled. This was a differ- “If you believe that Bahá’u’lláh ent kind of shaking that seemed to is a Manifestation of God, you are a come from within me. My whole body Bahá’í. You have to join us. We need was trembling. I knew I couldn’t live a you.” Bahá’í life, but I would have to try. “I can’t do that,” I said, panicking. “OK,” I said. “I can’t live the kind of life Bahá’ís are “OK?” Phillip asked, making sure. supposed to live, and I don’t want to be “What do I do?” a hypocrite.” Viv handed me a card and a pen. “You’re more of a hypocrite,” he “Just sign this, Peter. That’s all there said, “if you believe in Bahá’u’lláh and is to it.” don’t join us, than if you try to live a It read, “In signing this card, I Bahá’í life and are not able to live up declare my belief in Bahá’u’lláh, the to it.” Promised One of God. I also recog- “What?” I said, not believing he just nize the Báb, His Forerunner, and called me a hypocrite. I knew I was a ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of His Cove- screw-up, but I considered myself a nant. I request enrollment in the Bahá’í sincere screw-up. Community with the understanding “Listen,” he said. “Make believe that Bahá’u’lláh has established sacred that a river is overflowing its banks principles, laws and institutions which and is about to wipe out the village. I must obey.” 30 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

“OK,” I said again, and signed. out. How do I live a Bahá’í life? How However, I was shaking so badly my do I not drink? How do I not screw signature was illegible. Viv looked it up? What do I do now? I had no idea. over, then asked me to sign a second A group of young Bahá’ís were going card. I tried not to shake so much, but out to lunch and invited me to go with I couldn’t help it, and my signature them. I asked question after question was just as bad. He handed me a third about my new faith, partly because card. I knew so little, but mostly because “I understand if you don’t want I knew that as long as I stayed with me,” I said. “But I’m not going to do them I wouldn’t drink. I was hoping it again.” they would hang out with me until “Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll make the pubs closed and, as if they’d read do.” my mind, they did. On the bus back to Like that day four months earlier Cardiff I felt better. I didn’t drink that sitting by the River Shannon, I felt as day. I didn’t know what I would do if a great weight had been lifted from the next day, but I would worry about me. Then I was surrounded by people that in the morning. I had never heard who were congratulating me. I felt of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I was like a celebrity. People started buying doing “one day at a time” on my own. books from a table where they were The next morning I woke up laugh- set out and gave them to me. One was ing. I’d dreamed that an old man with a prayer book, which I didn’t think I a white beard and white robes told me needed. I was going to be all right. Looking “Here are the obligatory prayers,” a through my new Bahá’í books, I saw a woman named Margaret said. picture of the old man. His name was “What does obligatory mean?” I ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh. asked. How did He get in my dream? “These are the prayers you have Bahá’u’lláh said that I had to obey to say each day. There’s a long one, the law of the land. This meant that a short one, and a medium sized one, I had to leave the United Kingdom sort of like Goldilocks.” because my visa had expired. I had no- “You mean I have to pray? Every where else to go, so I was forced to go day?” I knew Bahá’ís said prayers, but home and make up with my family. A I didn’t know they had to. few years later, reading Frost, I came “Yes, that’s what Bahá’u’lláh says. across, “Home is the place where, when You’ll get the hang of it.” you have to go there, / They have to I wasn’t so sure, but if Bahá’u’lláh take you in” (“The Death of the Hired said I should pray, I’d give it a shot, Man,” 122–23). I wrote a letter to my even if I didn’t agree with it. father, telling him that I had become a Meanwhile, I had a lot to figure Bahá’í, that I was coming home, that Poetry and Transformation 31

I would try to do better, that I hoped FIVE we could get along. Then I wrote to Mathew Kennedy telling him that I Making up is hard to do. My father had become a Bahá’í and that I was was happy to see me, but I’m not sure coming over to Ireland, and that if he about my stepmother. I had to earn didn’t become a Bahá’í, I would beat her trust, so I got a haircut, shaved my him up. beard, and looked for a job. I wanted “No more fighting over religion, to stay as far away from drinking as Peter,” Mathew wrote back. “I became possible, so I couldn’t tend bar. I had a Bahá’í too. But come now and you’ll no other skills, so I drove a cab and be here when we elect our first Nation- memorized Bahá’í prayers while stuck al Spiritual Assembly.”4 in Midtown traffic. I started with the A Bahá’í couple from Bristol, just “Remover of Difficulties” because it over the English border, invited me to was short, and I wanted to overcome their wedding the following weekend. my fear that I would be “removed.” I I left Thursday and returned to the worked my way up to the “Tablet of house in Cardiff on Monday. Yellow Ahmad,” a tablet to one who’d spent crime tape covered the door. A neigh- his life searching for his “Beloved.” I bor appeared. “What happened?” I realized that I too had been searching, asked but unlike Ahmad, who searched for “The police arrested all you drug spiritual meaning, I was searching in addicts on Friday. They’ll be coming the world of things. I realized that back for you as soon as I phone them,” the search for truth didn’t end when she threatened. I became a Bahá’í. I had a lot to learn, If I hadn’t have become a Bahá’í, but I wasn’t the best reader and didn’t I would not have gone to Bristol and understand most of what I read. I would have been arrested too. I left in went to the Bahá’í Center whenever a hurry and didn’t return to Cardiff there was something going on and for three decades. met other Bahá’ís and came up with a plan. I drove my new Bahá’í friends to meetings around the city, asked them questions and paid attention to their 4 After serving as a member of the answers. Auxiliary Board, which helps to protect Six months later, my father got me a and propagate the Bahá’í Faith at the job apprenticing as a heavy-equipment grassroots level, Matthew Kennedy is, operator. Mostly, I ran brick hoists on at the time of this writing, a member of small buildings in the outer boroughs, the National Spiritual Assembly which but occasionally I operated a cherry oversees the administrative affairs of the picker in Manhattan. I learned that Bahá’ís of Ireland. Bahá’ís believed service to others was 32 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

important, and work done in the spir- During my lunch break operating a it of service was like prayer. I didn’t crane near 34th Street, I browsed the think hoisting bricks was very prayer- bookstore in Penn Station and picked ful or that I was serving anybody. I up Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching was just paying my bills. I realized Children to Write Poetry by Kenneth that I would have to go to college to do Koch. This is what I want to do, teach something more meaningful, but that kids to read and write poetry. I was hadn’t worked the first three times, going to be an English major. I took and I wasn’t sure it would go any bet- a placement test, which I failed so ter now. But I thought, if I’m smart badly I was assigned to a remedial enough to recognize God’s messenger, class where I was one of three native maybe I’m smart enough to make it for English speakers. I complained to the more than a semester. head of the English department that I showed up at Queens College to this was a mistake. After all, I was a register as a non-matriculated student, poet. taking courses at night. I didn’t need a “No,” he said, looking at my writing transcript or test results. I could en- sample. “You belong there.” roll in courses that had empty seats. He handed me my paper, which “What do you want to study?” a had no capitalization or punctuation. counselor asked. When I tried to explain why I didn’t One of the Bahá’ís told me that use it, he just shook his head. I spent a agriculture is important, so I said year in remedial English and learned “agriculture.” to read and write. “Agriculture?” the counselor asked. I read Bahá’í books that expanded “We’re in New York City. Do you see my thinking far more that drugs ever any farms around here?” did. I continued writing poems, which “Farms?” I didn’t know agriculture seemed more substantial than the ones was about farms. “Uh . . .” I answered. I’d written before. I wanted to ex- “What do you have that’s close?” press—no, I wanted to reveal and un- He looked at the counselor next to derstand the changes in my life. I was him. She shrugged her shoulders and clinging to sobriety, though I didn’t said, “Geology?” know that word yet. I was clinging to I wasn’t sure what geology was ei- this new religion, trying not to screw ther, but I was embarrassed for being so up. I wasn’t sure that I was making stupid and wanted to get out of there, progress. Then I remembered climb- so I said “geology,” and they helped ing the Old Man of Coniston in the me fill out the paperwork. I liked ge- Lake District. When I looked at the ology, but I knew I couldn’t major in top of the mountain, I saw how far it because I wasn’t smart enough to I had to go and didn’t think I would take hard science and advanced math. make it, but when I looked down, I Poetry and Transformation 33

saw how high I had climbed and didn’t life, the eternal questioning. The want to fall. I wrote a poem, trying to point is that the question is all. It understand this transformation. encompasses awe, wonder, hope, faith and doubt, confusion, de- FRUITION spair . . . (Commonweal 331)

A tree entered my mind Turns out they didn’t hit me up preparing for sleep for seven dollars. The writer, Hannerl growing deep Ebenhoech-Liebmann, went on to in the night compare my poem to Goethe and El- and grew iot. I was flabbergasted. Could one of neither blossoms nor fruit my friends have written the letter as a joke? But I doubted any of my friends a yawn branches in waking had ever heard of Goethe and Eliot. roaring with leaves The letter ends with these remarks: while there’s all this waiting . . . Peter Murphy’s “Fruition” is what time do the flowers start poetry proper. Why? It is one of (Commonweal 209) those poems of which Robert Nye says that they so uncomfortably I sent it to Commonweal, which and unforgettably give him the not only published it but mailed me a sense “that they read me, rather check for seven dollars. A few weeks than I them, and that they crit- later Commonweal sent me a tear sheet icize me, rather than I make the announcing the publication of their judgment.” (Commonweal 351) fiftieth-year anthology, which cost, of course, seven dollars. “Poetry proper,” really? I must be a Ha. They wanted their money back. real poet. I wrote out the check, and as I was about to seal the envelope, I noticed SIX my name on the back of the tear sheet: It is March 26, 2012. I am standing in To the Editors: Peter Murphy’s front of the terraced house in Cardiff, “Fruition” is a poem I learned by Wales, where forty years earlier I woke heart. Its impact dawned on me, up in the gutter. The urge to drink has slowly and gradually, just as the certainly decreased but hasn’t gone “tree . . . growing deep in the away. In 1987, after being sober for night.” Its meaning burst open fifteen years, I started having drinking “in waking roaring with leaves” dreams that terrified me so much they as it approaches the mystery of drove me to AA. I began to talk about 34 The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 24.3/4 2014

drinking, which—too embarrassed, especially around Bahá’ís—I’d never done. I started to write about it as well.

THE DESIRE

Last night I dreamt I was drinking again and got drunk, and walked out on the quiet life I’ve been living these last few years. I watched as I let my family go— The wife who understood and would not forgive, The child who clung to my loose clothing, crying Don’t go, Daddy don’t go, take Mommy and me with you. I remember saying that too, grabbing the coat of my own father as he swung his arms around to touch me. And I trailed him as he followed his father until I let go.

I fell back into sleep, into dreams— There were rivers I had to cross and recross, and fires starting in every forest I came to, and cars screeching around corners, about to go off a cliff, about to crash in a desert where I am thirsty all the time. (Stubborn Child 55)

But this is not an occasion for poet- turned back from Thee, Thou ry; it is an occasion for prayer. Look- didst graciously aid me to turn ing down at the gutter, I recite “Bless- towards Thee. I was as one dead, ed is the Spot.” I recite the “Remover Thou didst quicken me with the of Difficulties.” I recite a prayer for water of life . . . (Bahá’í Prayers gratitude: 19)

. . . What tongue can voice my While I will never be a “scintillating thanks to Thee? I was heedless, star,” I am no longer “humiliation Thou didst awaken me. I had itself,” and I am grateful. Poetry and Transformation 35

WORKS CITED

‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Promulgation of Universal Peace. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982. Print. The Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Bahá’í Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991. Print. Cummings, E. E. Is 5. New York: Liveright, 1996. Print. Ebenhoech-Liebmann, Hannerl. “Poetry Proper.” Commonweal 99.12 (1973): 331. Print. Frost, Robert. “The Death of the Hired Man.” Selected Poems of Robert Frost. New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962. Print. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “God’s Grandeur.” Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Baltimore. Penguin. 1967. Print. Keats, John. “[On Negative Capability: Letter to George and Tom Keats, Decem- ber 1818.]” Letters of John Keats. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Print. Lennon, John. “Imagine.” Imagine. EMI Records Ltd., 1971. CD. MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 July 2014. Murphy, Peter E. Stubborn Child. New York: Jane Street Press, 2005. Print. ———. “Ars Poetica.” Many Mountains Moving: A Literary Journal of Diverse Contemporary Voices (Fall 1998): 93. Print. ———. “Fruition.” Commonweal 99.8 (1973): 209. Print. Rilke, Rainer Maria. “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” American Academy of Poets, n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. Stevens, Wallace. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird.” Poems, Wallace Stevens. New York: Vintage, 1954. Print. Williams, William Carlos. “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.” Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1969. Print. ———. “Paterson, Book 1.” Paterson. New York: New Directions, 1995. Print. ———. “The Manoeuvre.” Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1985. Print. Wordsworth, William. A Choice of Wordsworth’s Verse. Ed. R.S. Thomas. London: Faber and Faber, 1971. Print. ———. Lyrical Ballads. Ed. Derek Roper. London and Glasgow: Collins, 1968. Print. Flight of the Paper Cranes TAMI HAALAND It started as a sad day. Sometimes you get more than you want. I settled in. We all settled and expected nothing but haze.

Then the colored box arrived. A little square of patterned sheets and cardboard. I lifted the lid and admired the perfect corners.

Inside, stacks of color, rows of blue umbrellas, tiny flowers, repetitive wide lines. Golden shine or primary pigment.

My friend Jane took the first sheet. We watched her fold and fold again until she had a red paper crane. She put it in the center of the floor, then started another.

I lifted a sheet from the stack, blue like Mediterranean doorways or deep sky. Every fold she made, I copied. For her, this crane

sang purple. We set them on the floor. The others joined in and watched our folds. The cranes multiplied and colors quadrupled.

Some kind of resonance emerged. Not jittery but joyful. That’s all it was. The word vibrant described what happened in our cells

and in the ascending pile of cranes. We didn’t stop. It became our work. We gave cranes to our friends, to people who only saw gray, to our families.

We planned ways we could get them further out. We mailed a box of bright cranes to the mayor, and news people came with their cameras.

They asked why we did this. We said we’re solving it. Watch, we said, you’ll see.