***
Jag börjar med ett exempel på "tålamod".
Patience, by Ross Gay
(From Catalog of unabashed gratitude. Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.)
Call it sloth; call it sleaze;
call it bummery if you please;
I’ll call it patience;
I’ll call it joy, this,
my supine congress
with the newly yawning grass
and beetles chittering
in their offices
beneath me, as I
nearly drifting to dream
admire this so-called weed which,
if I guarded with teeth bared
my garden of all alien breeds,
if I was all knife and axe
and made a life of hacking
would not have burst gorgeous forth and beckoning
these sort of phallic spires
ringleted by these sort of vaginal blooms
which the new bees, being bees, heed;
and yes, it is spring, if you can’t tell
from the words my mind makes
of the world, and everything
makes me mildly or more
hungry—the worm turning
in the leaf mold; the pear blooms
howling forth their pungence
like a choir of wet-dreamed boys
hiking up their skirts; even
the neighbor cat’s shimmy
through the grin in the fence,
and the way this bee
before me after whispering
in my ear dips her head
into those dainty lips
not exactly like one entering a chapel
and friends
as if that wasn’t enough
blooms forth with her forehead dusted gold
like she has been licked
and so blessed
by the kind of God
to whom this poem is prayer.
***
Det råder ingen tvekan om att Pablo Neruda är Ross Gays inspirationskälla för den här boken. Likt Pablo skriver han "hyllningsdikter" om vardagliga ting och händelser dock ur en något mer humoristisk synvinkel. Som i följande dikt:
Ode to sleeping in my clothes, by Ross Gay
(From Catalog of unabashed gratitude. Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.)
And though I don’t mention it
to my mother
or the doctors
with their white coats
it is, in fact,
a great source of happiness,
for me, as I don’t
even remove my socks,
and will sometimes
even pull up my hood
and slide my hands deep
in my pockets
and probably moreso
than usual look as if something
bad has happened
my heart blasting a last somersault
or some artery parting
like curtains in a theatre
while the cavalry of blood
comes charging through
except unlike
so many of the dead
I must be smiling
there in my denim
and cotton sarcophagus
slightly rank from the day
it is said that Shostakovich slept
with a packed suitcase beneath
his bed and it is said
that black people were snatched
from dark streets and made experiments
of and you and I
both have family whose life
savings are tucked 12 feet beneath
the Norway maple whose roots
splay like the bones
in the foot of man
who was walked to Youngstown, Ohio
from Mississippi without sleeping
or keeping his name
and it’s a miracle
maybe I almost never think of
to rise like this
and simply by sliding my feet into my boots
while the water for coffee
gathers its song
be in the garden
or on the stoop
running, almost,
from nothing.
***
Ross Gay is the author of Against Which (CavanKerry, 2006), Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh, 2011), and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh, 2015). He's also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of Pyrite and Lace: Letters from Two Gardens (Organic Weapon Arts, 2014). He is one of the editors of the online sports magazine, Some Call It Ballin’, and he’s doing some other really fun stuff. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington. Source: Publishing company
C'mon! by Ross Gay
(From Catalog of unabashed gratitude. Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.)
My mother is not the wings
nor the bird, but the moon
across the laced hands
of the nest. The palm on a fever-dreamer's
brow. She was born a crab, waving
the twin flags of her pinchers.
That's one of those poetry lies. Truth is
my poor mom's hands bruised on our butts,
so that was the end of that.
And when the monk slapped her ass,
she didn't kick him down the stairs,
but slipped the saffron tale
in her pocket. Truth is my mother's brave
as a bison. For years
she dragged her hooves through the ash
of her heart. Head down. Steam rising
in ghosts from her pelt. Years
where nary a blade of grass. Nary
birdsong. But one day
a small seed took hold. Then another.
Soon, beetles and spiders came back, and then,
and then, the birds were chatting
in the new growth. And right now
a family of elk crosses a stream
and behind them on a hillside
a galaxy of wildflowers
shimmers. Shimmers
and hollers,
"C'mon!"
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