Just a couple of poems from the new book, Why the Woman Is
Singing on the Corner.
This book I wrote--
in the beginning of it, you see a series of statements.
One is a poem from Gwendolyn Brooks
called "The Crazy Woman."
But there's a series of statements
that introduce this book.
And I wrote it thinking of several things.
One is Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Ophelia was abandoned.
She could not handle abandonment.
And if you know the story, her father, her brother,
and finally Hamlet abandons her.
She's too fragile to deal with it, so she goes--
she loses her mind.
That was part of this book.
The other is a part of a story I was
told by my father of a woman who had a wonderful life
but had been abandoned by her husband
and how her life went downhill.
In this book, the woman's name is Phelia,
and we think of Ophelia.
And when you meet her, it's sort of like--
I'm basing it on techniques that Robert Browning did,
the English poet, because Browning would do monologues,
and you would have to get the content of the character
through the monologue.
One of my favorite is "My Last Duchess,"
in which you get to know, through the monologue that
is being spoken, you learn a lot about the man.
When I read the slave poems to you in a moment,
you'll see what I'm talking about in that.
Well, here you will find out about this woman simply
by listening to what she says.
And she's moving into her insanity
because of being abandoned all of her life,
by her child dying.
She had three husbands and one lover,
and they all abandoned her.
And in order to hold on to what she thinks is her sanity,
she creates a ghost--
her sister's about to die.
She cannot handle that, so she creates a ghost before
the sister dies.
She also goes back to one of her ancestors, whose name is Jo,
and Jo was a slave woman.
And she goes back to the slave plantation to her grave
every now and then.
She's trying hard to hold on to her sanity.
In the end, she's schizophrenic, and she is screaming--
singing, singing on the corner.
Now, I don't know if any of you have ever
seen some of these people.
I have in big cities-- in New York, in Washington.
They're male or female.
They're screaming on the corner.
Although recently, since the era of the cellphone,
I have heard people talking behind me, and I look behind.
And I think it's one of these poor people who
are schizophrenic, and they are people walking around
with their cell phones talking.
So I'm not so sure what has happened
in that kind of reality, people talking on cellphones,
and I think they're talking to themselves.
And it's a whole new world really.
Garrah is about to die and keep her promise.
Her sister's name is Garrah.
"And go softly, silently, no pain in her sleep.
She just moves on.
Her funeral is within the week.
Where is tomorrow?
Phelia thinks.
She will cremate her as Garrah wanted back to earth.
Spread me in your garden, Phelia.
Let me give you purely what God can touch with his feet,
walk upon in roses, weep in wildflowers,
then you will not grieve," so Garrah said.
So Phelia makes into song, so her litany
begins, "Garrah lives, she thinks, and then: Announce him.
Phelia remembers Garrah can't desert her flesh.
I thank her for that in my deepest passion.
Pale the prince, that secret litany only
we can speak in tongues.
Oh, she smiles comfortably within herself,
that's just the family.
Hallelujah!
Garrah and me, holding on.
Phelia buries part of the ashes in the garden
by her bedroom window.
Something she had nursed and tended like her loves,
the nasturtium, snapdragon, wood lily,
rose, hyacinth, sunflower, daffodil, tulip,
the lives of her delivery.
Later she would sit for long hours
and eat her garden, in separate flowers one by one.
And she would feel her madness coming on like a thunderstorm,
meddling its way through the smallest
bud or the tenderest root.
And here she is on the corner.
The city corner is hot.
By now she has completely moved into a schizophrenic existence,
and she's singing.
The summer breeze is slow and teasing,
but Phelia hardly notices.
She clenches her fur around her neck
because she no longer accepts the seasons.
This is her cold, her winter of frugal comforts.
She prefers to enjoy it.
Her stockings have slipped, one almost down
to her ankle, the little things.
She pinches a few ashes from Garrah's box
and sifts them to the breeze.
People stare.
Garrah's never far away, she murmurs.
And that is my keeping, my blessing on this world because
between the sprinkles of ashes, she
calls not Garrah's name, but His.
And she calls on the Lord, I announce Him.
I announce Him.
And she turns and looks Him in the eye.
She is outside of herself, watching herself
walk into the corner backwards.
Oh, doesn't she look pretty?
Her heart beats wildly.
She hears it dance within herself.
She sees Jo keeping step, not herself but Jo,
as she releases her words into the supple air.
Roaming children touch her body, whirl her around
until she is dizzy, and the street corner
becomes a complex of illusions.
The children sing as they turn her about, Little Sally
Walker sitting in a saucer.
Rise, Sally, rise.
Wipe your dirty eyes, put your hands on your hip,
and let your backbone slip.
Oh, shake it to the east and shake it to the west.
Shake it to the one that you love the best.
Phelia shivers.
The dizziness engulfs her.
She does not notice their mocking laughter,
nor one girl scamper for a stone to place under her feet.
She does not trip, she does not fall.
Now, she is royal, and song and dance are her ablutions.
A coming has been invoked, nothing less.
She has seen to it, she is a good provider.
No time for sorrow, woman.
Soon the children scatter and take their voices with them.
She feels a little pain, another absence.
Then she sings again.
It is the mother song, the daughter
song, the song of the first universe, born out of nothing,
the sister song, the song of stars and winds of the night,
the song of Jo in her cold bed, the song of fire and flood,
the song of prophecy, the song of denial and hope,
the song of the next morning, already seated in the lung.
There is no death in me, she thinks.
My song is just resting."
And in the end, she finishes the song.
I'm skipping through this.
And she says, she feels--
"Heat moves into her eyes, her vision
bleeds whenever she handles it.
She sprinkles Garrah's ashes into its wounds
and attends its call.
I announce him, she sings, and folds
her song between each dangerous syllable.
Someone stops to watch as she struggles with an elusive note,
but hears the vanished children's voices in her own.
A piece of her crippled shadow moves against the earth,
softens it.
A small crowd assembles, to which she bows graciously.
Everything is complete.
In this, she finds family.
'Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.'
Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet."