Poem: Olga Korbut on Chernobyl, 1991

Collage from photos by Heinz Kluetmeier (l), Kimberly Butler (c) and Taro Yamasaki (r)


OLGA KORBUT ON CHERNOBYL, 1991 (after reading "Olga Korbut's Deadly Foe," People, 3/4/91)

The radiation does this.
These pictures in the magazine
could be two different women.

At 17, smiling,
in pigtails
at the Munich Olympics,
I look, what, maybe 12.

At 35, these lined, swollen eyes
this brittle hair
this thin, thin mouth
remind me of my grandmother.

Only the shot
with my student
at the Minsk Sports School
balanced on the beam--
feet perfectly arched,
one hand flourished--
reveals some connection.

Funny, yes?
I didn't know I was smiling.
It's as if
a long-practiced gesture
creates the earlier time.

At our regional hospital
7,000 have come in for leukemia--
if you could see their pictures:
adorable children, each of equal desperation.

I stayed there myself last spring
for my liver
and even with my connections
could get no disposable syringes.
We found a needle
and we boiled it and boiled it.
It was so dull
I could not finish the treatment.
One learns to accept people dying.
(stanza break)

You in the West knew first.
They didn't tell us for four days.
And then only about the accident.
The papers called the radiation levels safe.

In Minsk, 180 miles away,
we were all outdoors.
It was close to May Day
and we were planting gardens,
enjoying the spring weather.
If we had been told
we could have stayed inside.

When people began to hear
our authorities might be
hiding the truth
we were afraid.
Of the water.
Of air.
At first, people were very ill.
Now all the time
we have headaches.
We always feel weary.
It has been five years
and we are still afraid.
When it rains we
cover our heads.

On the streets of Minsk
there used to be
so many pregnant women.
Now you see fewer and fewer.
We are scared and cautious.
We could go away
and maybe give birth to
healthy children.
But it is our home.
Our families are here.
It makes us torn.

Byelorussia used to be
the feeding ground.
Now it is poisoned.
In the past
when I would come to your country
I would buy blue jeans and shoes.
Now I buy chicken bouillon,
dried fruit.

Byelorussia used to be
the republic of mushroom gathering,
berry hunting,
flower picking--
now people don't go into the woods.
In some schools
when the children want to see
what nature used to be like
they go into a little courtyard
inside the building.
The teacher says,
"This is a bird"
and it is a plastic bird.
"This is a tree."
And it is also plastic.

11/17/91

Old Wives Tales

The photo  comes from a post by Susy Morris at her blog.


This poem comes from circa April 1988.I no longer have the email account which would let me know for certain, but I know I wrote it during the time of the Nellie's Cave Road controversy, which started that year. Here is my note on the inspiration:

April 25 it got up to 90 here & I bought my first glass of lemonade of the season. Because VE was floating on the horizon, I started to write in my journal about lemons. I went to the Tech library to investigate if lemons might have some mythic or folkloric significance I could use in a poem & discovered the Cleveland Public Library's Popular Beliefs and Superstitionsfrom the Ohio Collection of Newbell Niles Puckett (G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1981). This seemed the perfect resource, given our Cleveland connection. I wrote down lots of Mr. Nile's superstitions. Since I had a horrendous cold, many were of the ilk of  "To cure a cold, boil rabbit tobacco leaves with goose grease and lemon. Drink the liquid with the grease that falls in the bottom." The two that found their way into the poem, though, were the most intriguing. The one about the ghost brought to mind a man who haunts the life of a friend of mine. The Roanoke Times had just had an article on a prof at Hollins who was interviewing women on how their husband's ex-wives haunted them. A woman in my office who read the article had said, "The last few days I've had nightmares about Steven's first wife & in real life she's not the type to cause nightmares." So in the poem, I started to toy with bringing in the ex-wife. Then I thought, my friend is also an ex-wife, hence I had the ending. & the title. My journal entry about lemons found its way into the piece, displaced as to person. All that remained was to get all the loose ends to tie together. This is one of my favorite kinds of writing, the poem that comes out of the ozone, a serendipitous mix of ideas glomming together at some pt. in time to make a new whole.

OLD WIVES TALES (for Angela, after reading Newbell Niles Puckett)

1.

"The eating of lemons will cause you
to have a good sense of humor."

He grins, clicking
the rind in front of
his teeth with his tongue.
They are drinking iced-tea
and he always says this
before finishing off the yellow wedge,
bumpy skin and all.

He is the man who makes her laugh.
It is only later
when they cling to each other
in her poster bed at the farmhouse
she's restored with her bland husband
that the woman pictures
the man in a gauze mask
in an ivory-tiled room
timing contractions.
Not hers, the college abortion
and grapefruit-sized tumor
have foreclosed such options.

But isn't jealousy love?
He has told her he stole his daughter
because her mother didn't love her as
he does,
because he didn't want
his daughter raised by a Kansan
who never laughed at jokes.
The woman is always dreaming of
his pale midwestern wife
who appears at her door
takes the girl and
this man, who's so clever,
so misunderstood.


2.

"To ward off the ghost of a dead
person, hang a lemon in your front
window."

In the front window
of her new, compact apartment,
the woman hangs out a lemon
to ward off his ghost.
He is not dead,
only gone.
And not gone.
With her first husband
it wasn't like this,
nor her second.
Only this man in between.
This one who had beat her.
Not with his hands
but his words

which linger acrid in the air,
sarcasm with a sound
like the smell of cabbage cooking.
And since he had been in her life
she cannot feel alone.

She cannot enjoy the quiet
to pursue reading her stories
canning cloved peaches
sewing lace curtains.
Instead she feels guilt.
That she stayed so long.
That she'd gone so soon.
The woman is always hearing
the small daughter
left with him, whimpering
"Didn't you love me?"

The woman should be combing
the girl's hair.  Sewing
rick-racked smocks,
buying a tiny silver ring
with an amethyst birthstone.
He always said he stole
the girl for love.

She'd overlooked
that he'd put a four-year old
to bed on a matress without sheets
with their dishes piled
filthy in the sink, their food
dessicated in the oven.
That the girl would approach
even strangers to be cuddled.
She'd told herself it was the wife
who'd depressed him like this.

So the woman let her husband go, and
clung to the man, and took the girl
shopping for contour cartoon sheets.
She hung lemons to freshen the air,
polished every surface with lemon-
fresh Pledge, filled their life
with lemon meringue pie,
hot tea with lemon and honey.
Come summer they'd
drive to the drugstore and order
their first glass of lemonade
iced down, hand squeezed.

And wasn't jealousy love?
He'd been so possessive
he hadn't let her girlfriends
or even her sisters visit the farm.

It wasn't until
they'd spirited the woman away,
ordered her to sell the house,
for gadsakes, out from under him
if he wouldn't leave,
it wasn't until she'd
married a second time to avoid him
and divorced within a year
that she began to think, maybe
jealousy was something different.

Who was this wife,
the mother of the girl?
At night, the woman can hear
the wife sob for her firstborn.
Is this lemon--lit by the street lamp
outside the pane glass of an in-town
apartment that he has never seen--
really for him
or is it for the child and her mother?

And how do ties bind--
the woman's ex-husbands
who now have new wives--
are those wives hanging lemons
in their front windows
to exorcise her?

Poem: MEMORIAL DAY AT POPLAR FOREST

Photo:  Ghost marks on the bricks at Poplar Forest.  

MEMORIAL DAY AT POPLAR FOREST for C.B.A.

Thomas Jefferson
rode the ninety miles
two days on horseback
three by carriage:
this octagon villa
his retreat from public life
at Monticello.

Sated on soda bread
a magnum of wine
we stretch out under the farthest surviving poplar
watch cumulus clouds dock and dissolve.
One evokes a falcon
its swoop of wings, its talons.
Above us, the bough trimmed severely,
the poplar's leaves crowd in along remaining wood
as if to compensate for phantom limbs.

On the house tour we learn
Tom's slaves cast and laid a quarter million bricks
according to his design directly to clay
with no foundation.
After one hundred eighty-seven years
the skeleton of bricks remains intact
paint scaled off a coat at a time
then plaster, all stored to stoppered test tubes:
archaeology essentially a de-constructive process.

Ghost marks on bricks
reveal a mantel here
a chair rail there,
let us glimpse the future restoration.
I prefer this bare brick:
strained backs of men and horses
beneath the great man's surfaces.

Beth Wellington
5/31/94

POEM: OYAKO SHINJU

Photo of Fukimo Kimura, h/t Tom Schnabel (bio, radio program) who used it in his post about Kimura, in response to Jarissa MacFarquhar's article, "A Buddhist monk confront's Japan's suicide culture" about Ittetsu Nemoto in the 6/24/13 issue of The New Yorker.

*

OYAKO SHINJU*


"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now." 
        
      --Alvin Lucier
Oyako Shunju translates as "parent-child suicide, a practice traditional in Japan. 

"Like most traditional Japanese women, Fumiko Kimura considered 6-month-old Yuki and 4-year-old Kazutaka to be extensions of herself. She loved them passionately, almost obsessively.

"She took them everywhere with her--even to die."       

      --Leslie Pound, "Mother's Tragic Crime Exposes a Culture Gap," reprinted from the 6/9/85 Dallas Morning News.

After reading Leslie Pound's account,  I decided to write a poem in her persona, as if Kimura was writing me back from jail.

1.  YOU ASK WHY I'D WALK INTO THE PACIFIC WITH TWO BABIES

Childless in your room
other coast of a wide country
you steam rice for supper
write me this question.
I sit in a cell
fill legal pads with pencil:
The ocean cleansed my heart and my body.
The ocean breeze blows the past away.
                               

                               *

My first love was always the ocean.
I was born on a small island.
Old ones called the year of my birth
firehorse--
poor chance to find a husband;
I would burn him, cause his death.

The ocean breeze played a scale,
waves washed my ankles.
I was standing in music.

                                *

Girls take up flower arranging
or tea ceremony
waiting for their husbands.
My aunts advised:
"Polish harder.  Become a piece of jade."

Since they found Western arts
desirable, I practiced piano for ten years.
The ocean breeze taught its scales to my fingers.
All the time I kept one secret.

                                *

All the time I kept this secret:
with no hope for a husband
I was strangely free.
Windy nights at low tide
moon scrubbed waves ivory
against ebony of ocean.
Such a friendly omen
sent me to the keyboard, avid.
One evening, grandmother,
listening to the fifteenth hours'
practice, suspected me
possessed,
gravely counseled magic.

                                *

For her sake I frequented the shrines
lowering eyes
to demonstrate some small despair;
questioned my husband-less
fate, picturing instead
(to get the gesture right)
a hesitation on the keys,
the ruined examination.

The time came; it came to pass.
National Music University not my future
you'd say I brought failure on myself.
The truth:  I misread the ocean's omen.

2.  TIDES TRAVEL OUT

I hoped this
was what ocean counseled.
Maps showed your country of long coastlines.
I had the ear for language,
liked the sound of California,
hummed it as I bought my ticket.

All night I dreamed
a long but easy boat ride, something
I cannot remember--night tides,
a bell, the pier.

                                *

In your country I sold hot dogs, nights,
three blocks from the pier.
Grease frying, coins clinking,
the bell on the cash register:
I was listening for the ocean.

Cars honked at the drive-in window;
teenagers back from the game
yelled across the lot.
The day-cook, Japanese,
was born in your country.
One evening in the back
room he proposed marriage.

                                *

Suppose
the old ones had told you
you would never marry.
Would you notice
he lacked ambition,
a desire for children?
He promised a piano,
an apartment by the ocean.

For eight years
we lived downtown
in a noisy walk-up.
I had to keep my job.
each night I dreamed
I hadn't failed the examination.
In a quiet room
the audience waited.
My hands stretched above the keys.


                                *

I started to walk down to the Santa Monica sea:
I like the sea.  I like the Santa Monica sea
when I lose my way it comes to meet me.
And when I have something sad, it comes to meet me.
Although this was not acceptable
I ask for a divorce.

                                *

I found an auspicious job.
At the Japanese restaurant
I could save up for my lessons.
The cook, Mr. Kimura, was a painter.
He'd graduated in Tokyo
from Musashi Arts University.
He spoke of pink curl of shrimp,
translucent winter melon.

If you could have
heard him in the kitchen--the drawing cut
the thrusting cut,
the clack of lacquer soup bowls.
He spoke of sea bass in August,
sea trout in May.
Shiny eyes,
bright scales,
clean taste of ocean.

3.  HOW TRADITION COMES INTO YOUR ROOMS

Six years ago we married.
He bought me a piano.
Soon owned his restaurant.

Home, evenings, I always
cooked our simple meal:
miso soup, bowls of rice,
cups of scalding tea.
I washed white porcelain, black
lacquer, humming to myself.
The piano waited for my practice.

My hands stretched above the keys,
belly rounding like the sea bass.

                                *

Our son Kazutaka came,
his gurgles the uneven ocean currents.

I spent days at home now,
wished to teach tradition.
I bathed his father's feet each night.
We removed the bed and slept on mats,
left our shoes outside the doorway.

Soon Kazutaka crawled.  We took
all furniture from the living room,
all sharp edges,
the piano.

                                *

I named my daughter Yuri.
Neighbors exclaimed over my tiny porcelain doll.
To hide any sign of pride
I lowered my eyes, spent
whole days dressing her and Kazutaka.
Combing their hair, walking by the ocean.

Kazutaka ran ahead
scooping fists of sand, watched
them pouring through his fingers.
I took his hand,
pointed to the ocean; we watched
tides wash in from Japan.

I told him of my life on the island
of walks on that shore,
of practicing the piano.

                                *

You can imagine my dishonor.
Mr. Kimura's mistress called,
implied to support us
he had abandoned his dreams to paint.
He'd seen her several times each week
and since he hadn't wanted another child
she'd undergone the shame of an abortion.
Now she had found out about Yuri.

4.  THE SECRET OF FIRE AND OF WATER

She sat down with us.
In our home.  Offered me
his love letters,
returned his gifts.
One week later, she sent a boy
with a note to the door.
Offered to sacrifice her own life,
if the problem could be settled.

Mr. Kimura
came home 2, 3, 4,
even 6 o'clock in the morning.
Still I washed his feet, only asking
that he paint my picture.

He never noticed I couldn't
eat, lost my concept of
memory, of sleep.  Left toys
strewn across the apartment floor.
I was not qualified as a mother:
the ocean's omen beckoned.

                                *

A quiet moon, washing waves.
A piano started playing first quietly,
then louder, out of tune.
I heard again grease frying,
the bell on the cash register.
My eyes squeezed shut.
Street lights dazzled, then
again the quiet moon, the washing wave
and the old ones whispering firehorse,
firehorse.

                                *

On the appointed afternoon
my dress was the pink of seashells.
Santa Monica beach nearly deserted,
a teen-age couple mocked the shrieking gulls.
Along the windy shore, an old man
stooped to gather seashells.

You ask how I could walk into the Pacific with two babies?
You must understand
my children were me--
I couldn't leave them behind.

Kazutaka fought; my nails
dug crescents in his wrist as we walked into the sea.
I lay face down in the cold water waiting for our death.

                                *

Living is hard and dying is hard.

Mr. Kimura visits me daily in jail.
I put away the legal pads.
Agree to his plans--we will
start over, have other children.
I lower my eyes to demonstrate
regret, picturing instead
the hesitation of the ocean's waves.

And all the time I keep my secret:
the children were me.
The sea will hold me tight
and it helps me forget my sorrows.