(A Reading Giftt & Insight)
… I have known crude beginnings. I have known vague. I
have come into, upon this place learning, learning to be
brave, learning that I had set my hand to the plough
apparently along where Walcott hailed as the straits of
heaven. I was going to be lost at times and I wonder if I
should call it lost or searching. I only have to connect
whether from the deep to heights the lowly to the elevated
and lifted-up darkness into light the prostitute’s white
linen to the puritan’s frock the priest to the clinical hypnotherapist
the fisherman to the royal housekeeper
wherever they figured along the straits each bearing their
goblet each carrying the mark of the wild in the flesh its
provocations and syndromes its commanding trumpet
calls to discipline its frailties its passionate spaces their
contribution to thought and its gathering up in reason
demanding that brothers and sisters dwell together in
unity with oil blessings and thanksgivings. Here we do not
bear the mark of separation between secular and sacred,
an embodiment we should not deny. It is liberated
people’s sacrifice of joy a contextualizing of our material
economic reality. This is the point when thought and
imagination shango. It is here that I want to sleep but
sleeping only wakes me. It is here that flesh is weak and
the spirit shakes dust off its wings. Here food is media and
drink a rendezvous with rivers. Fish is now sky-life and
corn the wind-shaken blade. It is here in the dance that
the musician’s finger-tips feel like marble on the strings
and slides and picks with assurance. Thanks to
AS SHE RETURNS
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Dominican musician Maximin Powell for this insight. Hail
Bro! Here in the geography of mind and soul time and
space have no boundaries and physics earns a quantum
quality. Here is a flawless acupunctural contact a Hindu’s
bliss a Buddha’s heavy stillness a Christian’s resurrection
rumbling a Rastafarian’s fire I blazing into Babylon’s evil.
Here in the invisible wind is a transformation at Mecca a
humanist’s urge to love an atheist in the heights of reason.
Here is a Quaker in silence. Here is a Baptist in the throes
of the spirit a Pentecostalist’s ascension into passion of
prayer a fisherman’s full net bursting in morning’s sun, a
Kabalist silenced, a blind man cured a Mother’s gift of a
child after three days into labor. It is the oneness plane.
Here the milk knows the child and the blood its bone. Here
the prey knows its hunter and the whale communes with
the language and structure of the oceans governments. It
is here that the congregation mediates and priests follow.
Here the ant marries the Internet and they build an
institution of undeclared ownership. It is no one’s
property and it will not be taken colony. Here men cannot
legitimize self-interest or vagabonds reject their love for
justice. Here there is no insecurity in neighborhoods and
mushroom clouds will not eat the lungs nor weaken
bodies to insanity. Blessed are those who have evidence of
this here. It is crucial, since here also, deception thrives
on restless minds. It appears that anything that can be
thought of already exist. There is no need for thought. All
one has to do is taste, consume. Truly they satisfy your
STEINBERG HENRY
every need. Think of it they say and it is available. Here
thought is material expression, reflection flighty. Prayer
takes time and time is money. It is here some claim that
history is dead and men in their reach for unlimited
wealth in the face of poverty and death hunger and
desperation disease and control contend that God too is
dead. It is here they conclude that spirit ends and the
dollar begins. It is here that the righteous are persecuted
and the middle passage rolls. It is here that tens of
thousands are scattered on ocean floors. See a Mother
and her child rising from the ocean floor yet another and
still another this one clutching a Coptic-looking cross.
This one died in rough seas jumping the deck. These
stories?
I have only just arrived. My colors are fresh and
dripping. Here I learn. Here every entrant learns. In fact
here we eat and learn. We consume the word. We are sure
that before the thing was one sound, one verse, the Word
becoming!
– Drawn from Steinberg Henry’s ‘As She Returns’ published at http://www.publishamerica.com
