"Atonement, for Sean Thomas Doherty"
Dear Sean, this morning at 8:30 on a crowded uptown 4 train
stuck in a tunnel because of a sick passenger up ahead,
a woman gets interested in the cover of your book
and asks, what are you reading.
I say poetry.
She says, read me one.
And other passengers look at her funny.
This done-up corporate-type Black woman who wants a poem
on a crowded train on her way to work.
I'm not sure what to do, Sean.
I don't want to disturb the other passengers.
But then I think, these motherfuckers
are fine when crackheads sing songs and beg them for change.
I'm just reading a poem to a woman across the crowd.
So I start with "Your Voice after Desnos."
And I get to the end, and she says, that's it?
I say, yeah.
She says, read me another.
And the rest of the train is tight uncomfortable, Sean.
There are a couple smiles, some white woman looking at her
and frowning, a couple awkward away-glances.
But now there are also a couple of folks taking out their iPod
buds to check out the commotion.
So I think we have a good long stretch on a slow-ass uptown 4
train between 42nd and 125th, so I read "The Dark Soul
of the Accordion."
I start slow.
Your first line is breathtaking, Sean.
"My grandfather does not sleep among the roots."
And immediately, everybody is hooked.
Everyone is in, the tattooed man whose name I imagine
to be Gus, the elderly Filipino man
in the neat threadbare suits and dirty shoes,
the Catholic schoolgirl who's folded down
the band of her skirt waist so it can ride up over her thighs,
and this Black woman with a corporate suit
and satchel and muted red nail polish and immaculate hair.
All of them are in, Sean.
And she's smiling like she won the lottery.
And I'm reading your poem on the 4 train
like it's mine because I've already read it aloud
to myself three times over the past two days,
and the train impossibly crowded.
But I'm holding on to the center pole and dancing.
My friend Rupa once told me I was kinetic, Sean,
that I couldn't talk, let alone read a poem,
without the words pushing my most fervent prayers away
from my rib cage, without looking like I
was about to get up and run.
And your poem is one I wish I could have written.
So I'm reading it, almost shouting now.
I've got me some room around the center pool,
and I'm digging into the words, those taut lines like trenches.
My grandfather's eyes are rain across countless countries,
you see.
Sean, the train knows.
It's picking up speed and starting to rumble past 59th.
And the train is more silent than every New Yorker's
quiet memories of bodies flinging themselves
like so many Icaruses from the center of that towering heat.
All are unspoken fear, except for me,
open and praying-chanting your poem now.
The orchestra of the accordion's breath is my most verdant lung.
I'm bobbing, weaving, me, your poem,
and 200 New Yorkers stuck in rush hour traffic on the Uptown
4.
It is the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
It is early fall.
I'm never up this early in the morning, Sean,
but I'm doing a class visit up at Fordham University.
And I don't do these early mornings,
but I'm glad to be up and busy, Sean, because it's work
and I am heartbroken.
I hurt my girl, Sean.
I hurt her bad.
And I just want to not know how flawed I am
every second of every moment.
So I'm glad Sarah has offered me this visit.
Sarah once recited, drunk out of her gourd, Psalm 100 to me
and 10 others in a bar over the jukebox,
which I imagine was playing Prince,
but it could have been anything.
And who knows if this has anything to do with this ride.
I'm reading your poem past 86, past 96, me,
the train, your grandfather's accordion,
a single kinetic organism.
And I hurt my girl, and she's never coming back.
And I'm looking for any kind of redemption.
I can find because I don't fully believe today
that I'm a good man.
And it's almost Kol Nidre.
And in your poem, you ask your grandfather,
do you still consider yourself a Jew?
And according to you, he doesn't even hesitate.
He's on his deathbed.
He's thought about this and he says, what is a Jew?
If a Jew is someone who follows the Torah, no.
But is that what makes a Jew?
And if so, what good for others?
What walls.
And it's 125th Street, and there is applause,
and I almost forget to get off.
I'm sweating, and the corporate Black woman is already gone.
And a couple of folks nod.
And one dude says, that was a pretty good way
to spend a morning ride.
And I get off.
And, of course, Sean, here's the kicker.
None of this really happened.
But it could, Sean.
It could.
If I can see my way clear to read to a train full of people
your poem on Kol Nidre.
I might be in the clear.
But, of course, that's not exactly true either.
A man can chase his own shadow for a long, long time
before he knows anything.
Your grandfather knew this.
In the end, he followed his mother's voice out of here.
What irony, what poetry, Sean.
Your papa, a poet, the breath of an accordion,
a socialist jester on his deathbed.
He's trying to free me on the 4 Train.
It's crowded.
And I'm reading silently but breathing like I'm running.
I'm with you and your papa.
And I realize for a while, my whole body
is bending and nodding from the waist.
The two schoolgirls are looking at me funny.
Kinetic.
For a moment, Sean, it feels like I'm davening.
[APPLAUSE]