This is "Kubota Returns to the Midst of Life",
a poem addressed to Tadeusz Rozewicz,
the poet of the Polish reconstruction
after World War II.
Coming back, I've been helped by the lessons you have taught,
Tadeusz.
That a man's task is not only to rebuild a country,
but his own household.
And even more, the spirit of home, of wife,
of meat and rice, of lights on at night, and no one slamming
shut the door that locks you in.
"This is bread," you told me, as I smoked in my cell.
"This is life."
And I said, "Yes, this is Kubota's life.
To live near the sea, to harvest from his garden,
to sharpen the knife in the back room of my store
and walk out of my door and hold the blade up to the sun
so I could see it shine."
"This is a man," you said.
A man's life is important.
It is of the highest importance.
And it was my mantra every moment
I felt my heart shrink back small as a walnut,
black and withered with the fear of a man who was a number.
I created myself after my death, Tadeusz.
I constructed life with desert and memories of home.
"This is a window," you told me.
And I gazed beyond it to the future
where a garden awaited me with my wife
in it, holding in her arms the pink and yellow blossoms
from plumeria trees.
The blossoms fell, Tadeusz.
Fell from her arms heavy with scent
as she swayed to the music of all the objects of life.
It was my welcome home.
My son's shy and awkward, not yet man.
My grown daughter is laughing and weeping.
One of the old villagers pulling a goat by a rope
and giving me its life as tribute
to my silence years long and refusal to betray them.
This is a man, this is a tree, this is bread,
you have taught me.
People nourish themselves in order to live,
and I ate what was given for the sake of returning
to the midst of life.
So I could talk to the water, so I could stroke the waves
in the lagoon with my hand, so I could
converse with the river running through our village past cane
fields down to the fish ponds and out over the reef.
"Our lives are of great importance,"
I shouted to my wife when I returned
to her arms full of plump blossoms.
Human life is important as I talk
to the water and the moon and the flowers.
"This is Kubota," I said to the Earth, to the rain.
And if I heard a voice flowing from the sky, the Earth,
or the sea, Tadeusz, it was a stubborn one from the threshold
of your house.