☆ Poetry: Revolution happens in the most unexpected places
The 'De Grey' Hours, circa 1390. Image by Wikimedia Commons
In a world of performative virtue (and status) signaling, former Board of Equalization candidate Peter Coe Verbica illustrates in some teasing blank verse how acts of rebellion and authenticity and kindness can occur in the strangest of places—and how they emanate from fresh, creative readings of hidebound texts. An Opp Now exclusive.
“Lamentations”
First computers corrected
our spelling, then our grammar,
and, finally, our thoughts.
Listen:
There are the assemblers
of watches, of cars, of poems.
Out from the fields
came one of them,
like an rural mathematician
who solved a riddle
which had been
bedeviling us for ten centuries.
The story begins simply, as
they often do,
in Peru before the revolution,
before the farms and mines
were stolen by the state.
A teacher, having just
washed her hands after lunch,
sits at her desk.
She touches the bun
on the top of her head,
as if to see it hasn’t fallen off,
as if it was a small round hat
made of hair.
Off-handedly, she gazes
through her classroom window,
her lashes like
the wings of jungle butterflies.
Surprised, she spies
a child standing
on a chair across the hall.
She sees the boy
stretching to remove a crucifix
from a white-washed wall.
She notifies the principal
who arrives with his thin tie,
oiled hair,
and pockmarks.
The two of them discover
the solid door is locked.
Peering through
the glass,
he shouts at the student
kneeling on the floor.
(Oblivious, the boy
worries the icon with a
screwdriver.)
Finally, the janitor
arrives,
blinks his eyes,
and takes a sleeve
to his round nose
and wiry mustache.
He brings a large ring
of keys, inserts one
into the lock, and turns
the brass knob.
The principal steps
in front of him,
makes two long strides, and
picks up the culprit by an arm.
Suspended, the uniformed boy
swims in the air,
but cannot escape.
“Pablo! What are you doing?”
the teacher asks.
The adults look at the pieces
of broken wood on the floor.
“Someone had to save him,”
the student cried.
The commotion raises
the curiosity of those at recess.
They line the walkway,
like young soldiers,
ready to throw bullets
or flowers.
Years pass and much is forgotten,
including the names which
have been removed from
the many of the monuments.
But, after Pablo became famous,
we asked him about the incident.
The poet drew a long breath
and set his cigar
on the metal bistro table.
His dark eyes seemed
to absorb the light around us.
He shrugged his shoulders
and frowned.
“I thought at the time,
just because he is God,
there’s no reason why he
should have to suffer
like the rest of us.”
The poet’s reply
still strikes me
as odd,
knowing that he kept
a dog-eared book
by the positivist
José Ingenieros.
I found a partial answer
reading Pablo’s journal
after he died.
It was under
a childlike drawing
of a nude woman in bed.
“Even atheists enjoy their lamentations.”
Read more from Verbica, titled “Stand,” here.
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