WEBVTT

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Part of what I do for a
living out in Provincetown

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is I'm a massage therapist.

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It's a wonderful
profession for a poet.

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It's very quiet, very direct--

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make people happy.

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This is a long poem
called "The Massacre."

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And part 2 makes
reference to that.

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It also makes reference
to the friends

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of the dead-- we, out
in Provincetown, have

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lost a great number of
our friends to AIDS.

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The poem begins with
a reference to Xerxes,

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who was a Persian King
way, way back in--

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I don't know, fifth
century, maybe before that.

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And the Persians were
always invading Greece.

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They were always after us.

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And he had come up to
the Bosphorus, where

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Constantinople,
Istanbul, is now, and was

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trying to cross the water to
come down and invade Greece.

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He had one more time.

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And the waters
were not friendly.

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He was not able to sail.

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And they waited.

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And his army waited.

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And they waited.

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And they waited.

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And finally, they were
getting very restless.

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And he ordered his
men to whip the ocean.

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This was taught to
us in grade school

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as an exercise in futility.

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But--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--there are other
ways to look at it.

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"The Massacre"-- "I
understand Xerxes's command

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to wield the whips on
the intractable bereaving

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apron of the sea.

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I beat the foam with
racket and with bat,

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hoping the tangled plant
in my therapist's office

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will escape the
havoc of my grief

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and when it thrives,
from week to week,

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increase the fervor of
my sickle arms sowing

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the calm air in her witness.

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A murderous growl,
like a machete,

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flattens the delicate bronchi
where the lungs come to a stem.

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The ghosts are with us,
poured from bruised tissue

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like the blood I spray,
embarrassed, on cream sheets.

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My scream is tireless,
my arm its pump.

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I hate the arrogant poet
who last night remarked

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how much the natives
recollect their wars

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behind the birthplace of the
ancient memory he came to paste

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onto his suitcase between Rome
and Istanbul, Berlin, New York,

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a gaggle of invaders around the
nameless, dusty, unmarked shore

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young Homer roamed.

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Suitcase rhymes with
exile only for a native.

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I had to learn it
rhymes with the Bahamas

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for the touring clerks, who
keep the books that feed

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on distant ill-remembered war.

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Two Germans walking
home one dusk

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cracked a boy's arm across
their thigh bone like a faggot

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and threw him on the
pavement, writhing.

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It was full.

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The fabled light of Athens
shown on the protruding bone.

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Their boots were new.

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They raised the infected dust.

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And in the silence of the
boy's disbelief and pride,

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the untold eons hide.

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2-- the friends of the
dead lie in my table.

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I do what I can with
their breath in my hands.

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Witless, the birds are singing.

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The crocus garland month
lengthens our light.

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I want it always to be light.

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I fight the night and win.

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I peel my eye against
the black and white TV

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until it dawns, then sleep.

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The Palestinian and Boston
homeless split the screen.

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Number of children living
on Brazilian streets--

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what is 40 million?

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Jeopardy's prey fill the
camera, their stripped

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and stunning faces
emblazoned in the halogen,

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a kind of sustained lightning.

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And the peasant
heart, who counts

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the seconds between flash
and fall of thunder,

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shrinks from the looming toll.

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Horror is toxic.

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The lesions on our organs
keep the score, the gentle

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and the hard are being
taken in legions.

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And the globe might shake us
off its flank like quarry dust

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and start again with something
less free, less wrecked

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by greed.

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But it suffers us on its
blue cetacean patients,

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like festered barnacles.

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Like counted sheep midair over a
stream, the friends of the dead

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pause on my table.

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A shofar is ringing
like starlight,

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too young to have reached us.

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I do what I can with their
breath and my hands."

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