monday poem(s) #12: Naomi Shihab Nye, "Hello" / "The House in the Heart"
I posted a bit of Nye's work a couple of months ago, and now I'm doing it again. I always intended "Hello" to be one of my monday poems - last five lines are among my favorite lines of poetry ever - and now seemed like the time, since truepenny and I had a little exchange about it this weekend and I haven't read any new poems since last week anyhow.
When I looked up "Hello" I also found "The House in the Heart," a poem of which I've always been fond, and which I'm including here as the poetic equivalent of a bonus track, partly because it occurred to me that melymbrosia might like it and I'm curious whether I'm right or not.
Yellow Glove was the first book of contemporary poetry that I read, and I am cross that it's out of print, despite the subsequent reappearance of portions of it in the Selected Poems. I still love this book, differently and perhaps more deeply; "New Year," for example, is heartbreaking in a way it simply couldn't be when I was fourteen... And now I want to post that one, too, but if I go down that road I'll just start typing in the whole book. I've picked two and I'm sticking to 'em. For now.
Hello
Some nights
the rat with pointed teeth
makes his long way back
to the bowl of peaches.
He stands on the dining room table
sinking his tooth
drinking the pulp
of each fruity turned-up face
knowing you will read
this message and scream.
It is his only text,
to take and take in darkness,
to be gone before you awaken
and your giant feet
start creaking the floor.
Where is the mother of the rat?
The father, the shredded nest,
which breath were we taking
when the rat was born,
when he lifted his shivering snout
to rafter and rivet and stone?
I gave him the names of the devil,
seared and screeching names,
I would not enter those rooms
without a stick to guide me,
I leaned on the light, shuddering,
and the moist earth under the house,
the trailing tails of clouds,
said he was in the closet,
the drawer of candles,
his nose was a wick.
How would we live together
with our sad shoes and hideouts,
our lock on the door
and his delicate fingered paws
that could clutch and grip,
his blank slate of fur
and the pillow where we press our faces?
The bed that was a boat is sinking.
And the shores of morning loom up
lined with little shadows,
things we never wanted to be, or meet,
and all the rats are waving hello.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Yellow Glove
reprinted in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
The House in the Heart
How it is possible to wake this empty
and brew chamomile, watching the water
paint itself yellow and the little flowers
float and bob-
The cars swishing past in dark rain
are going somewhere.
This is my favorite story.
The man with a secret jungle growing
in his brain says chocolate
can make him happy.
I would find a bar
heavy as a brick. With almonds.
And lean forward whispering of
the house in the heart,
the one with penny-size rooms,
moth-wing ceilings, cat-lip doors.
This body we thought so important,
it's a porch, that's all.
I know this, but I don't know
what to do about it.
How it is possible to move
through your own kitchen
touching a bamboo strainer curiously:
Whose is this? And know it is
the one you use every tea,
to feel like an envelope
traveling in and out of the world
carrying messages
and yet not remember
a single one of them-
Today I look out the glass
for some confirmation.
Lights will stay on late this morning.
Palm fronds were frozen last week,
there is rain in the street.
And the house in the heart cries
no one home no one home.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
from Yellow Glove
reprinted in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems