[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/LieblerGinsberg.mp3″]
and people of everyday,
must poems be dressed in gold,
in old fearful stone? …
I want poems stained
by hands and everydayness.”
—Pablo Neruda
I know Allen Ginsberg’s dead,
And I want to write
A poem for him just like every-
Body else wants to do, but I can’t
Help but think of my neighbor
Who too died alone, recently, in his home of
30 years, and how he was a person
Who will never have a poem
Written in his honor or to his memory.
He was a person who will never have
His life enshrined in sound
And symbol of verse or song.
I didn’t know my neighbor either,
But I want to remember him
With verse and poesy just the same.
I want to celebrate
His life as the important treasure
He must have been as someone’s
Husband, father, brother, friend.
I want to do this
Simply because he lived.
My neighbor wasn’t famous,
And I probably only saw him once
Or twice in all the years that I lived
Behind his back fence.
But his words always made me
Amazed at the kindness of this world
When he spoke softly to me,
While he tended his garden.
I don’t remember his words
As memorable quotes spoken
By a famous person. It was just small talk
Spoken in the lexicon of the backyard.
No “Howl” or “Kaddish” or
“Sunflower Sutra” to be sure,
But graceful words that rose
And danced over the fence,
Behind his red bricked house.
So, while I would really love
To write a poem for Allen Ginsberg,
Like everyone else, right now
It seems more important for me to capture
My neighbor’s life, just another person
Whom I never knew.
I’ll write it all down
In a poem that he’ll never read
And that his family will never see
In print or hear at a public reading.
But isn’t that what poetry is all about?
Images speaking to the unspeakable
In our dreams as we lie awake in our sleep?
And, now, because I’ve shared this poem
With all of you, we are forever connected
All of our bones together
Side by side in the rich graveyard
Soil of poetry and life.
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