L, Lenox, USA
A poem to celebrate bubbies, abuelas, grandmas all over the world, and encouragement to be involved in work toward peace and abolishment of hunger and poverty.
L
K:
Hello friend,
Thank you for this wonderful question. When I was a child, my mother became devoted to a community of radical Catholic nuns who were deeply involved in protesting the Rocky Flats plutonium trigger site at Rocky Flats, outside Boulder, CO. I spent many weekends protesting, sitting on the tracks, and making human chains to block the trucks from entering the facility. These women, now well into their 80s, continue their efforts to fight for peace and justice. They are my grandmothers.
When I think of these powerful women, I also think about the poetry books that were on my mother’s bookshelf when I was a child. These were the kinds of books that the nuns used to inspire homilies for their backyard masses: Grace Paley, Maya Anjelou, June Jordan, Denise Levertov, May Sarton…so many strong women writing poems to inspire activism and promote peace.
I have no doubt that these books are the reason that I became a poet myself. I turned more towards modernist lineages of feminist poetics transmitted through poets including Anne Waldman, Cecilia Vicuña, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. These and other fierce older women – many now grandmothers themselves – continue to raise their voices through poetry and art to speak truth to power.
As I am now traveling without my books, I am writing this letter to you from a public library in Reading, MA. It’s so sad to see the shelves only ¼ full and everyone on their computers. They don’t have many poetry books here but I did find one of Grace Paley’s later-in-life books called Begin Again (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). Here is a poem for you and all the bubbies, abuelas, and grandmas who are right now facing fears of growing older all while continuing to fight the good fight and not forget to dance:
Responsibility
Frightened fearful afraid
-Grace Paley
older waking in fear
healthy feet okay appetite
only teeth half gone wrists
strong night love waking in
fear older old nothing
ahead glad to say ah!
willing working tired
laugh! dance after supper
knees useful love waking
afraid bad news friends old
sickness becoming well
an occupation a
hope against age
Also in this book is a poem my mother and the nuns absolutely loved called “Responsibility.” Perhaps you know it too?
Responsibility
It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
-Grace Paley
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy to hang out and
prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery there is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time
