Samuel John Hazo
Menu
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
Home
Biography
Curriculum Vitae
International Poetry Forum
Selected Poetry
Books
Media
Videos
Gallery
Contact
Samuel John Hazo
Menu
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
Home
Biography
Curriculum Vitae
International Poetry Forum
Selected Poetry
Books
Media
Videos
Gallery
Contact
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
Home
Biography
Curriculum Vitae
International Poetry Forum
Selected Poetry
Books
Media
Videos
Gallery
Contact
TO MY MOTHER
Had you survived that August afternoon
of Bright’s Disease, you would be sixty-three,
and I would not be rummaging for words
to plot or rhyme what I would speak to you.
Tonight I found a diary you kept
in nineteen twenty-eight, and while I read
your script in English, Arabic, and Greek,
I grudged those perished years and nearly wept
and cursed whatever god I often curse
because I scarcely knew one day with you
or heard you sing or call me by my name.
I know you were a teacher and a nurse
and sang at all the summer festivals.
You made one scratched recording of a song
I often play when no one else is home,
but that is all I have to keep you real.
The rest exists in fragile photographs,
a sudden memoir in my father’s eyes
and all the anecdotes of thirty years
remembered like a portrait torn in half
and torn in half again until a word
deciphered in a diary rejoins
these tatters in my mind to form your face
as magically as music overheard
can summon and assemble everything
about a day we thought forever past.
For one recovered second you are near.
I almost hear you call me and sing
before the world recoils and returns…
I have no monument, my beautiful,
to offer you except these patterned lines.
They cannot sound the silences that burn
and burn, although I try to say at last
there lives beyond this treachery of words
your life in me anew and in that peace
where nothing is to come and nothing past.
Download PDF
© Copyright SamHazoPoet.com
Home
Curriculum Vitae
International Poetry Forum
Selected Poetry
Books
Videos
Contact
Close
Font Resize
A-
A+
Readable Font
Contrast
Choose color
black
white
green
blue
red
orange
yellow
navi
Underline links
Clear cookies
Greyscale Images
Invert Colors
Close