These are the facts, nothing here but the facts. I was on the road to Damascus via a street in the West Village in New York City, when, in an instant, barometric pressure had dropped 100 MB. Darkness enveloped an eleven-o’clock-morning sun. It may have been a trick of the mind, or some kind of serious panic disorder. Although I could no longer see, I pictured myself a child on a visit to my great grandmother's house in La Salle, Illinois. In my head I felt as though a tornado was approaching...
Part 3. fromOH, CHICAGO, White City Suite 3. River View, the amusement park, sat down the block From my first high school, its Ferris Wheel dominated That side of the North Branch of the Chicago River. Readers, please, excuse the free thinking. I go to the time, The year my great grandfather, John, Came the one hundred miles from La Salle, Illinois, To Chicago, he wanted to see the lights, the World's Fair, The white city, magic, and when he returned, home, He told tales about the town on Lake Michigan, How great and many its marvels twenty-years after the Fire. He, my great grandfather, he returned home, Home to the dark of the Illinois River valley, To gas-lit streets, to a wife and children, Who lit the wicks of single candles Or kerosene, hurricane lamps to climb The steps to their bedrooms at night. When he told the family about alternating current, Chicago ablaze in the middle of the night, He ignited in my grandmother lust. She wanted a part, She sought the grandeur; She was no longer happy at home, What darkness, the narrow, a woman’s common lot, The drudgery of hand laundry, the knowledge that, As often she had openly lamented, “Yes, I was born too soon.” No easy task, ironing the household’s apparel With an implement heated atop a wood-fired stove, Early to bed, early to arise, the great bore, Small town life, it was said she would bed the devil -- And some claimed she had -- she wanted out, escape. She married my grandfather, an itinerant painter, Who went from town to town painting church murals. And following the grand cliche, Grandpa drank his liquor as others might milk from a jar. And he added to his cocktail’s already heady mix, The family’s romance says, he had bad habit, He moistened the stylist between his lips; And we know, the paint those days had lead for its base. Her husband, my grandfather promised my grandmother Life, incandescent, excitement, magic, And the possibility of dreams come true, Right there on the flat lands off the shore of the Lake. Remember, the new town rose up from the old, Up from the ashes, why, it was a resurrection! Please! Do not tell me there was not real truth to the story, Had not the Whites been rescued? Was it not a miracle? They had escaped from the Indians, The massacre at Fort Dearborn. My grandmother sought energy, electric, the moment, She wanted a big-time story, no small-town idyll. She desired city burning, burning bright, resplendent. Oh Chicago! It is from you that I have my life
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TweetAs of this date my YOUTUBE Channel registers 253,000 + Single Page Visits, Video Views! A Google Search of the termsStanley Pacion YouTubeyields a result count of thousands. Please SUBSCRIBE BUTTON TO SEE HER AGAIN, April 2015* And never, never more to see her form, Not even a glimpse of her, Not in the nights filled with trembling stars, Or at noon when the Creator's bright Feeds and graces every living thing, How do I believe that I may never see her again? Never, never, again, to witness her walking, Her walking with me on the hard, fast dirt of the bridle path, Along the river, underneath the shadow of trees, Her leaping up over the embankment Then hastening away upon The white-washed stones of the causeway, How now might I accept that I may never see her again? I wonder if she remembers the bridge, the one Topping the low-rise concrete dam there at New Hope? I told her as we looked to the river below That nothing had sufficient strength, That no material exists to control the overflow, Is there nothing to contain my flood of feelings for her? How else might I relate my mood? Ask the pertinent question? Never, never, again, to eye her fleshly presence, Entangled, standing in the tresses of the forest, Or stooped, gathering strawberries, picking them One by one from the plants, her, the image of her, Her out between the raised earth rows And inbetween the shallow in the farm garden fields, That now and forever such vision is no more, How am I ever to conclude so terrible a destiny? And here at home I walk the big-city sidewalks, Remain alone while the night, the late hours envelop me. My cries echo, repeat my anguish. Through the empty parking lots and off the brick walls, Against building after building, My voice carries, yet seemingly I am not heard, Though occasionally some one person may look, Shake a head from side to side at my sorry spectacle, Most people hurry past, eyes down, as if I do not exist, But what about the reality of my situation? Over and over, I hear myself implore her to return to me. Should I not, and is it not better to forget her? Oh, no! To see her again, It does not matter when Not important, makes no difference, where. Were I to tilt my head upwards and behold, If today should I have glimpse her in the daylight heavens, Her smile, her eyes upon me, And then to watch her again as she flashes The moment of her wonderous gait, see her again before She disappears lost in a sky configured within magic wisps Which move her, wheel her along Against a deep, blue patch of sky, Until she vanishes against the vastness of the heaven's vault. Mercy grant my wish! Or perhaps tomorrow I chance a vision. Imagine a ship going down, and all its glory sinks, Down, down into the Sailors’ Locker, Would it be possible that she still surfaces, That I have sight of her, no matter what all else disappears? Yes! She rises above a whirlpool force, I see her again over a watery vortex, yes, She above a swirling ocean power, unsinkable, Albeit now the sun has set, And moon's light is the scene's sole illuminate? Oh, no! To see her again, and to view her in the moment When the volcano opens And I am on the edge before the lurid, red hell-mouth, And witness its demons’ roaring spew of steam and ash, Yet even though such terror-instant befalls me, I do not flinch. I am steadfast. I have no fear of misadventure. I look into the conflagration. I do not plug my ears, I listen, And from within earth’s deep, far-away core, Amidst the Hurley burly of all the explosions, Within the lightning claps and clamor, The mad noise of boulders being thrown, I hear it! I hear her name, Etta, Etta! I see her face and lovely shape, She, she dances above the fires! Yes, I admit her deviltry besets me. And to be with her in all the spring times, And in all the winters, Entwined in paroxysm of mighty-muscle clench, While I suck up the blood from her neck, And spot her flesh all over, Make it black and blue with the power of my caresses, Should I ever hold her in my arms, Might Hope let me see her again.
*After Gabriela Mistral's Love Poem -- The Chilean and Noble Prize for Literature, poet, Gabriela Mistral had entitled her poem, Volverlo a Ver, or To See Him Again. I do not hope to translate her great verse. Rather its spirit was the inspiration for my own.
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LOVE
WISH*
I
see the light coming out from your eyes. What
sacred wonder illuminates your face? Wish
I had the time and nothing else to do, But
while away the hours adoring you.
*A
original love poem which I modelled after a verse by Jalāl ad-Dīn
Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, and
more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi. He was
a 13th-century Persian poet.
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MOST EXCELLENT OF WOMEN She was a Lady who never choose to quit me. I can not count one bad word, Not so much as a moment of ill humor between us. At the stroke of the hour marking the time Precisely two years after we had been married, She gave me the birth to a son, Whose good name was the same as my own. The baby survived his mother, And he became my sole devotion. I nursed him insistantly, never leaving his side. In the whole-wide-world no ayah could ever be found: No one matched the ministry of me, this boy's father. Praise God, Your Will not ours be done. Within the month of my child's arrival a bad fever killed him.
Mericifull Almighty! Thank you for the joy and the glory of your bounty, For everything You have brought me each day. She was a lady who never choose to quit me. I can not count one bad word, Not so much as a moment of ill humor between us.
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REPENTANCE Darling! Oh my Darling, What an awful thing I have done. I have overslept; made you wait. Pray. What now my punishment?
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ONSLAUGHT Too much history, Decade after decade, year after year, With me subject to the merciless attack of the clock. Last night and into the dawn, wide-awake, Sleepless, watching the walls record the extending bright, Feeling that I have begun to crack all over, like an antique jar. Then at noon at last a nap, I arise again as the magnified voice of a late-day Call to prayer increasingly pours over the open window sill And fills the room. “We all owe death a life.”
