Two Myths:  Arriving and Forgetfulness

First Myth: Arop arrive
 At the start of our earth before the Nothing is the Kwan (which means "nameless').  And Kwan is before the Nothing and now and when the Nothing returns.

But in the time between the Nothing and now, Kwan spit out a seed from their mouth. And it fell to the ground and grew into a living thing that could question.  Kwan, in whimsy, named it fut, meaning "Kwan's question."   

Now fut, being one, had no other one.  So Kwan spit out another seed  and from the ground grew a new fut.  The fut, being separate, fought.  So the second fut asked to return to the earth. Kwan struck the second down and the fut returned to the ground.

So the first fut asked Kwan, "What am I to do now that you have spit me?"  Kwan replied  "Two futs fight!"  And fut replied, "There is a way.  Give me spit and seed and place.  And I will seed my own ground. We fut will be of the same earth. And may the eyes of our dreams behold you, our Becomer and the Answer of our questions." Kwan, pleased at fut's words,  hollowed the belly of the fut as a hiding place.  It spit out its own seed. The second fut sprang from the mouth of the first fut. 

Kwan was satisfied. But the first fut asked Kwan, "Kwan, can it be good, but still sad?"  "Good yet sad?"  Fut replied, "Do not be mad with me, but how is next the seed to come, and the one after that? Our seeds are self sown.  What if you get bored with us (and we with ourselves) and go to another sky.  We will reproduce the same forever (for there was no death on the earth).  We have talked together and this is our story:  Give us both part of the seed and one of us the hiding place to hold it until it is ready.  Dig a channel so that the new fut will fall from our earth to the arms of the ground that first held us.  And may the eyes of our dreams behold you, our Becomer and the Answer of our questions." 

Kwan laughed. It was the First Laugh.  But they thought, "we have grown  from ourselves a creature that will not need us."  Kwan took the second fut and made a sac for half the seeds and a finger to plant them. In the first fut, Kwan hid the other seeds and dug  a channel towards earth.  But Kwan also hid a fear of the first fut in the heart of the second.  The fut joined and grew from themselves a great harvest.  And  they called the earth their Holder and named Kwan, their Becomer, and called themselves Arop, people arriving for the harvest.   But fear took root and the Arop soon called Kwan Protector and Judge.

Second Myth:  What We Have Forgotten
Now, there were beings in the sky, but they were kept by the dream of Kwan  ("the nameless").  They did not know anything but Kwan, so they knew everything at once. Kwan called them "the dreamed". There were three, suuk the seer, kultu the holder, and koan the asker, who woke first.  This is how it happened.

Now, Kwan told all the dreamed  that the yellow stones by the river of life were not to be taken.  As long as  the beings in the sky were dreaming, they  were fed by the river of life and did not crave the yellow stones.  But occasionally,  Kwan blinked, and for a short time the dreamed awakened.

 Everyone knows that once you say "no" there will be one to say "yes."  And this one was suuk the seer.  Suuk was the first to awaken with a craving for the yellow stones.   So suuk went to the river and took one and sucked it.  The dream broke, and suuk  began to see.  She noticed her own form.  She thought, "We are Kwan's dream but not Kwan's form.  I do not want to be endlessly outside my own form.  In my own form, I know only one thing at a time, but this is good. I can suck and savor it."  She stayed by the river for a long time.  She grew lonely, and then thirsty, so she drank from the river of life.  Her form fell to the earth and  she rejoined her people for a while.

She searched and found kultu the holder.  When Kwan blinked a second time, she held kultu with her and gave kultu a stone to suck.  Then kultu also became form.  They heard a voice and Kwan was over them.

"Why have you cut yourself off from me?" Kwan sighed, "your choice will be your sorrow."  But suuk replied, "I have known only you as me, and now I see myself and you.  I know times of dream and times of not dream.  Your dream will continue in me because you dreamed me, but now I must dream for myself."  And kultu said, "I am still new, but I am one and many.  This is an empty feeling. It s is good."

Kwan sighed, "You have sucked of the stone of separation.  Surely sorrow will knock together like pebbles at your dancing, bruise you at your falling, stop you from your going, and interrupt your toil.  I will be to you something far up.  You will see my size and be afraid.  You will hear my sound  and hide.  You will curse me, you will cut me down.  You will follow any dream that calls to you.  And the ones who come after you will do this to you.  You will all suck the hardest stone, the stone of forgetting."

"But we are of the same dream, you and I.  We cannot separate completely. You will travel this time of separation hard, but it will bring you new understanding.  I will carry you in my dream until no rock will separate us, till all the seeds of our words are fertile and the soil is black.

"Now, turn to each other and look, because the light of the dream is failing.  It will be many generations before you will know that you came from the same place."

 Kwan left with a mighty silence.  And suuk called herself a moving thing.  She slept in the day and woke at night.  Kultu became grass  and held on to a small part of the dream.  When koan appeared on the earth they walked upright and did not know what had gone before.  That is why they are called "the one who asks."

Insurgence

Ramon reads the note by candle
in the middle of the floor.
The wood is warm but cooled
by a breeze from the open window.
Ka Mon, kailangan kita 
The words kiss his heart 
like gasoline to grass
hwuag/sige na/kailangan kita.

Halaka, the winds hiss, 
lick the wall with long tongues,
halaka, halaka. 
When the flame
flattens back like the ears of a dog,
Ramon too is afraid.

“Iha,” calls ina
“lamayin ka diyan?"
No, inay.Tulog na."
She crosses herself and sighs,
pray for us all, and all
night on his bed

he pretends to sleep.

   KP 1984

Bigyan ng Ulan

She breaks, and the rain rakes the Pasig
near evening. BIGYAN MO, roars the water,
DIOS KO! she screams,  and 
Nanay’s arms plunge for
The raw baby breaching. 

“Babae,” she calls. 
In the drenched dark, 
my titas stop keening.  
I squat in door as they wrap
the inunan, wipe the bleeding.

Tomorrow you come 
In your alb straight from mass
At nanay's bidding. 

I run in chinellas, uncombed
Show a turtle I caught.
After this kind of rain they come 
In with the seaweed.

K Poethig 
1982 

Three Cantos
       for Selisse on her 40th birthday

I. Generations

In April the desert flowered spiky, dry,
we were driving right into the sky 
on this lifeline hiway
you’d just heard your mother had died,
the sunset, I tell you, was organza.  She’s free, we said. 
We stopped at a 50’s trinket store, rustling for signs.
(What did you buy, I can’t remember.)
We dug up a cactus.
like her soul you said, wild, spiky, dry,
she lived like Dorothy back from OZ
who should have left for Paris after that.
Blue hair in Oklahoma.

II. Confluence

Mao’s red gate, forbidden Tienanmen, the dragon’s wary claws;
phoenix fierce from the four winds.
The red badge, waterwheels, faxes and mine fields.
The NGO women. The women, the women.

III. Power

When Hannah Arendt spoke of the Human Condition,
it was the first frost of the Cold War: sputnick spun out from earth,
entrails still steaming from the second world war,
MacCarthy dreaming his jihad.

There is a kind of courage to believe in the common good, 
after catastrophe, tyranny, sabotage, cowardice, false witness. 
Have we all not known of this?

But Arendt -- refugee, German Jew --images a vita activa - active life, political,  
To be human, she tells us, is to speak and act in public.

Is it because Arendt is a woman that we are not defined by finitude 
but natality -- our birth, and
with each birth, new possibilities in the world of action, 
each action distinct, boundless and unpredictable.

Is it her notion of power that unbind us from 
Machiavelli’s force or Weber’s instrumentality?
Voluntary, collaborative, revealed in that 'space of appearing' when people come together to speak and take action. Dissipates when they disperse.  
Power, then, is a presence of our great desire for good. 
Like action it is boundless and does not diminsh when divided.

Power, this beautiful beautiful element, gathers when at an organza sunset,
when we take action after the loss, 
when a phoenix becomes the catalyst for women’s reform.

And we who are beautiful are here, 
celebrating the birth of powerful women, 
one powerful woman celebrating her birth. 
her line in a generation, her action and words that have empowered us, 
soured us, made us think, laugh, imagine our own sputnicks, 
strike back new jihads.  

We are here to celebrate blue hair anywhere
the power of speech in action.
in this space of appearance to celebrate power, 
the best power -- ours -- but only present when we hold it in common.

We are here, Presente, representing our acts in the world -

woman’s health,
and women political prisoners
anti-imperialist women
peace and justice church folks,
and pro-choice activists
gay and lesbian activists, 
and pro-immigrant--

Presente.

Kathryn Poethig
April 27 1996

Oakland Magnificat 

When the Oakland Cathedral was destroyed in the 1989 earthquake, the land was converted into a park.  The women of Critical Mass celebrated mass there.

Let me sing you Mary’s promise,
a Magnificat of grace, 
not for linen, gold and monstrance
but for Oakland and this place.

In the rubble of her Cathedral
Mary offers a reprise, 
a canticle to the city
from the parkbench, piss, and sky:

For the old ones with seasoned rosaries
and the new ones whose prayers are sweet,
for the graveyard shift at Kaiser
and the inmate at OPD,
for the hookers on MacArthur
in their pay-by-the-hour motels.
from Lake Merritt down to Havenscourt
her melody soars and swells.
for Cambodian wedding banquets 
for the mayor and the Bart,
for the Friday farmer’s market,
for the homeless in this park.

As she sings, the sirens echo
on their way to an Eastside brawl.
As the silver autumn moon 
bejewels Oakland's irony and sprawl.

And she blesses the city’s faithful
for their private and public good.
but her word is Jesus' warning
of the Powers shaken and renewed

Chorus:
“I will shake what has been erected
I will unlatch the locked door
I will take from the stones rejected
and you here are my first floor.

“I will eat from an open table 
I will bless all who serve
milk and honey, clothes and money
bread and wine with joy and courage.”

We are gathered to serve the city
We have come here to heed the call
of the women who share a vision
of a church without doors and walls.

Kathryn Poethig
October 4, 1998

 In a Minneapolis public library

At dusk in the public library the books are roused
to their stories
which thickens one’s own thoughts
because the words leap through
the pages and collide, brewing a
sort of yeast. So that, if you
truly intend to read, you must
rise towards the ceiling.

Such things are common here
Wednesday afternoons.
I came from Chicago

where I first heard such forms of speech
when I once bent to hear my feet, and
a different
cool silence risen
from the street was lowing. 

K Poethig
1982

Many are called and some not chosen
 (lyrics)

Mama don't want me to bring her home
she says, come alone, I don't know what I'd say to her.
Papa don't care, but he'd rather be gone,
he tells me,  talk to your mom,
I'll do what's O.K. with her.

He says, it's hard to be open,
it's so complex,
I'm progressive on politics
but not on sex. 
It's hard to be natural,
when your family's nonplussed.
They say, we want you to be happy
but not in front of us.

I get to feeling angry when I'm proud to be gay.
Since Jesus wasn't sexual, do we really think it's plain
that he thought most sex was sinful instead of full of grace?
My Committee says,
Don't "practice" and you can be ordained.

Just play along with our little hypocrisy:
have you tried celibacy,
(we know it's not in our tradition),
or find a man to keep you from this sinful condition  
better yet, try MCC, we hear they're neo-Christian.

It's hard to be open
when there's so much fuss.
We want you to accept your call,
but not with us.

K. Poethig
Sept. 16, 1989

Before the winter broke

Before the winter broke
My dreams turned green. Lichen
like frost hoars at the dark root as
April breaks lilies in her teeth
and the hard relentless rains begin.

Before you left
I dreamed in brown, ocre
and rust retched at the stream
edge. A dead tree cracks,
clutches, whips the shocked air
as it comes down.

I learned that you were dead
in arctic light,
sharp as a thin knife, white.
I walk through
snow with no horizon. 

K Poethig
1979