Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (24 page)
Read Poems That Make Grown Men Cry Online
Authors: Anthony and Ben Holden
Nick Cave (b. 1957) is an Australian musician, composer and writer. He is perhaps best known for being the front man of the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,
established in
1983. Cave’s other groups include the Birthday Party and Grinderman. He is also the author of novels including
The Death of Bunny Munro
(2009) and the screenwriter of films such as
The Proposition
(2005) and
Lawless
(2012).
JAMES ARLINGTON WRIGHT
(1927–80)
RICHARD FORD
Accounting for this poem’s large effects (its exaction of a tear) reminds me of Johnson’s directive about light: it’s easy to
know
what light is, but
hard (yet sometimes thrilling) to
tell
what it is. In Wright’s lovely poem (I heard him read it forty years ago, in Ann Arbor), the thrill seems
to come from two sources: the splurge
at the end, of course; the freshet of sensation-put-to-words, an appreciative perception that one modest thing can actually cause a much grander one (art’s little secret). The other source is
the textured evocation of the modest thing itself: the homely narrative of the ponies, the restrained, delicate but strangely alerting imagery attendant (‘shyly as
wet swans’,
‘the skin over a girl’s wrist’). Add loneliness versus happiness – the big-ticket issues – to the mix. And suddenly something’s brewing. We sense it: a commotion
of colliding effects – restrained but impending, and seeking an outcome. In imagining that thrilling outcome – ’I would break / Into blossom’ – the poem doesn’t
so much reconcile its commotion as much as treat it as being
no longer quite bearable, and so leaps on and through – breathtakingly, if you’re me – into pure light.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and
me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the
darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of
my body I would break
Into blossom.
(1963)
The novels of Richard Ford (b. 1944) include
The Sportswriter
(1986),
Independence Day
(Pulitzer Prize, 1995),
The Lay of the Land
(2006) and
Canada
(2012). He has also published five volumes of short stories and a screenplay,
Bright Angel
(1990). He is Professor of Writing at the Columbia University
School of
the Arts in New York.
PABLO NERUDA
(1904–1973)
CARLOS REYES-MANZO
Pablo Neruda raises the veil covering the invisible people in history, the people who are ‘disappeared’ through poverty and hunger and the ‘disappeared’
in secret prisons by governments around the world. This poem speaks to me because it encapsulates how people suffer today, and reminds me of the
people I meet when I document the inequalities
enforced by an unjust economic system.
And then I stopped being a child
because I understood that
they did not allow my people to live
and they denied them burial.
The last line moves me because I can see what happened in Chile in the past still happens today globally. It is painful to come face
to face with people suffering social
exclusion. Nothing can justify an unfair economic system that does not allow people to live in peace and justice.
Pablo Neruda’s ‘Injustice’ is a critique addressed to a society that sees poverty and social discrimination from a charity viewpoint, and
reminds us that
we are judged by our sense of social justice. The poem is a salute to poor people who
live with dignity regardless of whether they have a home to live in or a burial place.
Injustice
Whoever discovers who I am will discover who you are.
And the why, and the where.
Suddenly I touched all injustice.
Hunger was not just hunger,
but the measure of humanity.
The cold, the wind, were also measures.
The proud man
suffered a hundred hungers and fell.
Pedro was buried after a hundred winters.
The poor house survived only one storm.
And I learned that the centimeter and gram,
the spoon and tongue measured greed,
and that the besieged man falls suddenly
in a hole, and then knows nothing more.
Nothing more, and this was the place,
the real present,
the gift, the light, life,
that is what it was, to suffer cold and hunger,
and not to have shoes and to tremble
in front of the judge, in front of another,
the other being with sword or inkwell,
and in this way struggling, digging and cutting,
sewing, making bread, sowing wheat,
hitting every nail that asked for wood,
entering the
earth as if in an intestine
to extract, blindly, the crackling coal
and, still more, going up rivers and mountains,
riding horses, pushing out boats,
cooking tiles, blowing glass, washing clothes,
in such a way that it would seem
all this kingdom had just been created,
dazzling grapes from the vine,
when humanity decided to be happy,
and was not, it was not like that. Little by little I discovered
the law of unhappiness,
the throne of bloodied gold,
complicit freedom,
the unprotected motherland,
the wounded and exhausted heart,
and the sound of the dead without tears,
dry, like stones that fall.
And then I stopped being a child
because I understood
that
they did not allow my people to live
and they denied them burial.
(1964)
TRANSLATION BY VALERIA BAKER
Following the 1973 coup which brought General Pinochet to power, the Chilean photographer and poet Carlos Reyes-Manzo (b. 1944) was imprisoned for two years, then exiled to
Panama. Kidnapped by the secret police
in 1979, to be sent back to Chile, he escaped from the plane and claimed asylum in London, where he has since lived. His work all over the world documenting
conflicts and their victims has resulted in four books and numerous exhibitions. In 2011 Amnesty International, to mark its fiftieth anniversary, appointed him its inaugural poet-in-residence.
ABIOSEH NICOL
(1924–94)
JAMES EARL JONES
I was rehearsing Lorraine Hansberry’s last (but unfinished) play
Les Blancs
for its Broadway premiere – her artistic answer to Jean Genet’s caustic
‘clown show’ about colonialism, called
The Blacks
(
Les Negres
) – and was in need of a point of view for Lorraine’s character. He was an African
in search of
his soul. He had searched in the sophisticated circles of London; now he has returned home to Africa at a chaotic time of liberation. I found Nicol’s poem pertinent not only for my character
but for myself. The poem confirmed for me that the goal in all life is not necessarily happiness or success, but simply contentment. Nicol’s liberation is not of the political sort, but more
the psychological. I have found that the plea ‘It is only because I have wanted so much / That I have always been found wanting’ applies to most of the characters I have ever tried to
bring to life on stage.