Shailja Patel. patterned sari border
 About/Press KitWorkMigritudeBlogNews/AwardsCalendar ShopContact Shailja
decorative pattern
         
 

















Be a part of Migritude's journey.
No contribution is too small - or too large. $2 buys coffee for a volunteer. $15 rents a rehearsal studio for an hour. $100 covers 2 hours of lighting / tech / set design. $500 helps fly Shailja to international festivals!!


You can also make a tax-deductible donation by check. Please email shailja@shailja.com for details.
 

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Travel well, Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)

Thank you for your life, and your work.

Your People's History of the United States taught me more than all the years of my degree in economics and politics. Gave me a lifelong set of tools to excavate the untold histories of my own country - and the world.

When I first saw the news yesterday, what rose in my mind was Denise Levertov's poem, September 1961:

they have told us / the road leads to the sea / and given / the language into our hands


September 1961

This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.

They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy

learning to live without words.
E. P. "It looks like dying"--Williams: "I can't
describe to you what has been

happening to me"--
H. D. "unable to speak."
The darkness

twists itself in the wind, the stars
are small, the horizon
ringed with confused urban light-haze.

They have told us
the road leads to the sea,
and given

the language into our hands.
We hear
our footsteps each time a truck

has dazzled past us and gone
leaving us new silence.
One can't reach

the sea on this endless
road to the sea unless
one turns aside at the end, it seems,

follows
the owl that silently glides above it
aslant, back and forth,

and away into deep woods.

But for us the road
unfurls itself, we count the
words in our pockets, we wonder

how it will be without them, we don't
stop walking, we know
there is far to go, sometimes

we think the night wind carries
a smell of the sea...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home

 
         
Shailja Patel. patterned sari border
©Shailja Patel