And I read that in conjunction with a poem I wrote yesterday.
I went to a little shop around here
that sells some local art and the woman
told me the story of the storyteller, the doll or the--
do you know this statue?
It's part of an Indian tradition.
I'm sure you know loads more about this than I do.
But anyway one of the things I've been doing
is collecting women portraits and statues
to put around my desk.
It started with a Crucian woman who someone sent me
a picture in the mail of a Crucian woman
a very strong dignified woman probably about 70.
And she she's communicating her strength to me.
Then somebody sent me Gertrude Stein at 26 years old.
And I put Gertrude up there looking at me.
She's a rather forbidding presence.
And I found this storyteller, and if you see it's--
she always has her mouth open and there
are babies she's holding, and the babies all
have their mouths open.
And she's sitting very flat and the babies
are hanging on to her.
I thought about how in my childhood from a lot of places
I was hearing don't say it, don't tell it, be quiet.
Don't say the truth.
And I was thinking of sometimes how hard
it is to peel back the layers and say
what it is you need to say.
Sometimes you have to go against the people you love even
sometimes to say what you need to say.
And so, storyteller--
I bought storyteller.
I left the store and I said I'll come back tomorrow,
but then I came back and I got storyteller.
And this is what I wrote last night.
"I say hello, oracle, kind mother, you
who have opened your mouth, who have allowed all of your babies
to open their mouths.
Storyteller of the buried, storyteller
of the gods and goddesses, storyteller of the living Earth
grounded, butt fixed flat to Earth,
from Earth the voices rise through your anus.
You feel your legs vibrate.
Your spine the rod of the universe
that all the fruit must cling to each arm a branch of stars.
You look at us intensely.
We are your mirror.
Your words repeat what you hear in our hearts, the secrets
under sleeping lids.
Your children cling as to a roaring train
though you are still calm.
They sense your movement.
You will never be at this place again.
The Earth falls naked stripped to dirt mountains.
Now we can listen to what we cannot yet hear."