WEBVTT

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Out of this history
is what I write.

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My poems.

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A recent cycle of poems.

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So, excuse me.

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Here we go.

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So I'll just read the first one.

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And I apologize for those of
you who've heard it before.

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Have you all heard
it, by the way?

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No.

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So I can inflict it upon
those of you who've already.

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In these poems I take the
voice of my grandfather writing

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about his feelings
of being wronged.

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But he's also
reaching out to poets

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who have inspired him to
endure, to 我慢,

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as they say in Japanese.

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And he may not himself
have known of these poets.

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I happen to have.

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So I decided that
he would know them.

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And I just sort of pretend
that he would know them.

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The poets are Miguel Hernandez,
the great poet of the Spanish

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Republic who was incarcerated
by the fascists from 1939,

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and then who was killed
in prison in Alicante.

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Also, Nazim Hikmet,
the great Turkish poet

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who was incarcerated by
the Turkish military,

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the Chinese poets
of Angel Island,

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the Peruvian poet
Cesar Barrio, who is

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put in prison for making
fun of the plantations.

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They had sugar
plantations in Peru, too.

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And then Kubota reaches out
to poets of great humanity

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and [? released ?] Tadeusz
[INAUDIBLE] the Polish poet

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of post-war reconstruction in
Poland after World War Two,

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Pablo Neruda, the
Chilean Nobel laureate,

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and finally to Charles Olson
of Gloucester, Massachusetts,

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the poet of Maximus.

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Anyway, this is Kubota to Miguel
Hernandez in heaven, Loop,

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Arizona, 1942, right
after he's put there.

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The sun travels slowly from over
the top of this Adobe stockade.

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And when I finally wake and
pull my face to the bars

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at my window, I see
a gray light filling

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in the shadows between the
mess and guard quarters

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and among river stones and
the sides of the central well.

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Horses snort and whinny far off
from the corral I cannot see,

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and a line of burros shuffles by
led by a single Navajo dressed

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in khaki colored clothes
from the trading post.

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I've been here two months now.

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To name the hill surrounding
this plateau of pinion Pines.

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Words I learned from the
guards and other prisoners,

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Japanese like me
swept up in the days

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after the attack
on Pearl Harbor.

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The guards won't say what our
crime is, rarely address us,

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but I overhear them
sometimes saying

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the names of mountains, nearby
towns, complaining about food

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and us Japs.

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They won't say if
we'll be let go.

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The interrogators come every few
days and ask about our hobbies

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back home.

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Studying poetry, working the
shortwave radio at night,

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and me, how I go
out night fishing

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for kumu at Cahokia Point.

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What landed me here
was I used to go

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torching, wrapping the kerosene
soaked rags on bamboo poles,

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sticking them into the
sand inside the lagoon,

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and then go light them
with a flick from my Zippo.

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The fish come in from
outside the reef, schooling

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into the light, and me,
I catch enough to feed

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my neighbors, Pierogi,
Hawaiian, Chinese, and all,

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eating good for days after like
New Year's in early December.

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For this, they say I'm
signaling submarines offshore,

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telling the Japanese Navy the
South Southwest route to Pearl.

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That's a lie.

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They ask when.

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I tell them.

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They ask where.

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I tell them.

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How many fish?

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I tell them same every time.

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No change my answer.

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But how can you transform
sorrow into poems, Miguel?

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To think of your wife and
infant son with only onions

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to eat while you
sing your lullabies

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from your cell in Alicante.

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Is it cold for you,
Miguel, with only the dark

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to wrap yourself in?

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It is warm, even hot
here on Navajo land

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in Northern Arizona,
where your poems

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are sent to me in the
moon's sweet silver light

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as it rises over the Mongolian
Plateau these summer evenings.

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They say that your sentence
was death for writing poetry,

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that you celebrated the
Republic and the commoners.

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I celebrated only my family
and the richness of the sea.

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My sentence, therefore,
is only eternity to wait,

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not knowing, imagining
everything, imagining nothing.

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My wife taking in boarders,
doing her laundry and sewing,

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my children growing
more trivial by the day,

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without word where
I have been taken,

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whether I will be
returned or simply

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have vanished into the unwritten
history of our country.

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The suffering tells me
to be patient, Miguel,

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to think of your
song of sweet onions

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lulling your baby even in his
hunger to a peaceful sleep,

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or the wars of our time and
their ignorant ministrations

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go on shedding their
black, tyrannical light

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into the future.

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