Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Accepted to read at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, wanting to spend a whole day in Salem, I took the overnight Megabus, arriving at South Station, Boston, at 6.00 AM. Then I realized that the first commuter train from North Station to Salem does not leave until 8:30 on weekends. I had The Nibelungenlied with me, and so read How Siegfried Came to Worms, and How Siegfried Fought with the Saxons, and How Siegfried First Set Eyes on Kriemhild. The epic reminds me much more of Arthurian romances than of the Iliad . Love plays as big a part as War. Arriving at Salem finally, I checked in with the Festival HQ, and then wandered down sleeping streets. I had eggs and hash in a diner run by Mexicans, before finding my way to Hawthorne's Custom House, where he wrote The Scarlet Letter while pacing back and forth from his office to the front door. Under the seaward gaze of the House, I walked out on Derby Wharf, which stuck out into Salem Harbor like a very long finger. Men on The Frie...

(Image from the Peabody Essex Museum) Pilgrim Flask Here we have thirst And patience, from the first —Marianne Moore, “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish” Ming Dynasty export to Catholic Spain, which rode the longest overland trade route to come to rest on its one spreading foot, the floral sprays ringed by a dotted chain, the coat of arms a country’s bold motive— ferrying spices from the Philippines, harvesting silver from Peruvian mines— this bottle makes a bloody wedding gift. Take it, my sister, take it. Marriage has traded what is here for what will be amidst the fears of crooks and banditry, and molded, for a few, a golden age with massacre, disease, prison and rape, yet keeps a promise intact in full view. A dream of milky white and cobalt blue, this old dispenser gives an older shape. Inflated goatskin on a twist of twine, it saved a restless man dying of thirst. For the faithful, the clay ampulla nursed the holy olive from the ...

For the Massachusetts Poetry Festival (next Saturday, people, in Salem), I have been asked to write an ekphrastic on an artefact from the Peabody Essex Museum. I wrote on this blue and white porcelain flask. (Image from the Peabody Essex Museum website ) Pilgrim Flask Here we have thirst And patience, from the first —Marianne Moore, “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish” Ming Dynasty export to Spain, which sailed or rode the longest overland trade route to come to rest on its one spreading foot, on a sideboard or centre mantelpiece, the coat of arms a country’s golden age, silver harvested from deep American mines, spices ferried back from the Philippines, this bottle makes a beautiful wedding gift. Please take it, sister, though it’s eight years late. I could not give it earlier. Away from home, I was studying to be a poet. Angry, too, when your faith didn’t accept the fact that I am gay. Time has returned material fact back to a means of ...