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  Like famished birds, my hands strip each stalk of its stolen crop: our name.

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  WADE IN THE WATER

  ALSO BY TRACY K. SMITH

  Poetry

  The Body’s Question

  Duende

  Life on Mars

  Memoir

  Ordinary Light

  WADE IN THE WATER

  POEMS

  TRACY K. SMITH

  GRAYWOLF PRESS

  Copyright © 2018 by Tracy K. Smith

  The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  Published by Graywolf Press

  250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  All rights reserved.

  www.graywolfpress.org

  Published in the United States of America

  Printed in Canada

  ISBN 978-1-55597-813-6

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-863-1

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  First Graywolf Printing, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951515

  Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter

  Cover art: Jie Zhao / Corbis News / Getty Images

  for Tina

  CONTENTS

  I.

  Garden of Eden

  The Angels

  Hill Country

  Deadly

  A Man’s World

  The World Is Your Beautiful Younger Sister

  Realm of Shades

  Driving to Ottawa

  Wade in the Water

  II.

  Declaration

  The Greatest Personal Privation

  Unwritten

  I Will Tell You the Truth about This, I Will Tell You All about It

  Ghazal

  III.

  The United States Welcomes You

  New Road Station

  Theatrical Improvisation

  Unrest in Baton Rouge

  Watershed

  Political Poem

  IV.

  Eternity

  Ash

  Beatific

  Charity

  In Your Condition

  4½

  Dusk

  Urban Youth

  The Everlasting Self

  Annunciation

  Refuge

  An Old Story

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  WADE IN THE WATER

  I.

  GARDEN OF EDEN

  What a profound longing

  I feel, just this very instant,

  For the Garden of Eden

  On Montague Street

  Where I seldom shopped,

  Usually only after therapy,

  Elbow sore at the crook

  From a handbasket filled

  To capacity. The glossy pastries!

  Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!

  Once, a bag of black beluga

  Lentils spilt a trail behind me

  While I labored to find

  A tea they refused to carry.

  It was Brooklyn. My thirties.

  Everyone I knew was living

  The same desolate luxury,

  Each ashamed of the same things:

  Innocence and privacy. I’d lug

  Home the paper bags, doing

  Bank-balance math and counting days.

  I’d squint into it, or close my eyes

  And let it slam me in the face—

  The known sun setting

  On the dawning century.

  THE ANGELS

  Two slung themselves across chairs

  Once in my motel room. Grizzled,

  In leather biker gear. Emissaries

  For something I needed to see.

  I was worn down by an awful panic.

  A wrenching in the gut, contortions.

  They sat there at the table while I slept.

  I could sense them, with a deck

  Of playing cards between them.

  To think of how they smelled, what

  Comes to mind is rum and gasoline.

  And when they spoke, though I couldn’t,

  I dared not look, I glimpsed how one’s teeth

  Were ground down almost to nubs.

  Which makes me hope some might be

  Straight up thugs, young, slim, raw,

  Who bounce and roll with fearsome grace,

  Whose very voices cause faint souls to quake.

  —Quake, then, fools, and fall away!

  —What God do you imagine we obey?

  Think of the toil we must cost them,

  One scaled perfectly to eternity.

  And still, they come, telling us

  Through the ages not to fear.

  Just those two that once and never

  Again for me since, though

  There are—are there?—

  Sightings, flashes, hints:

  A proud tree in vivid sun, branches

  Swaying in strong wind. Rain

  Hurling itself at the roof. Boulders,

  Mounds of earth mistaken for dead

  Does, lions in crouch. A rust-stained pipe

  Where a house once stood, which I

  Take each time I pass it for an owl.

  Bright whorl so dangerous and near.

  My mother sat whispering with it

  At the end of her life

  While all the rooms of our house

  Filled up with night.

  HILL COUNTRY

  He comes down from the hills, from

  The craggy rock, the shrubs, the scrawny

  Live oaks and dried-up junipers. Down

  From the cloud-bellies and the bellies

  Of hawks, from the caracaras stalking

  Carcasses, from the clear, sun-smacked

  Soundlessness that shrouds him. From the

  Weathered bed of planks outside the cabin

  Where he goes to be alone with his questions.

  God comes down along the road with his

  Windows unrolled so the twigs and hanging

  Vines can slap and scrape against him in his jeep.

  Down past the buck caught in the hog trap

  That kicks and heaves, bloodied, blinded

  By the whiff of its own death, which God—

  Thank God—staves off. He downshifts,

  Crosses the shallow trickle of river that only

  Just last May scoured the side of the canyon

  To rock. Gets out. Walks along the limestone

  Bank. Castor beans. Cactus. Scat of last

  Night’s coyotes. Down below the hilltops,

  He squints out at shadow: tree bac
king tree.

  Dark depth the eye glides across, not bothering

  To decipher what it hides. A pair of dragonflies

  Mate in flight. Tiny flowers throw frantic color

  At his feet. If he tries—if he holds his mind

  In place and wills it—he can almost believe

  In something larger than himself rearranging

  The air. He squints at the jeep glaring

  In bright sun. Stares awhile at patterns

  The tall branches cast onto the undersides

  Of leaves. Then God climbs back into the cab,

  Returning to everywhere.

  DEADLY

  The holy thinks Tiger,

  Then watches the thing

  Wriggle, divide, stagger up

  Out of the sea to rise on legs

  And tear into the side

  Of a loping gazelle,

  Thinks Man and witnesses

  The armies of trees and

  Every nation of beast and

  The wide furious ocean

  And the epochs of rock

  Tremble.

  A MAN’S WORLD

  He will surely take it out when you’re alone

  And let it dangle between you like a locket on a chain.

  Like any world, it will flicker with lights that mean dwellings,

  Traffic, a constellation of need. Tiny clouds will drag shadows

  Across the plane. He’ll grin watching you squint, deciphering

  Rivers, borders, bridges arcing up from rock. He’ll recite

  Its history. How one empire swallowed another. How one

  Civilization lasted 3,000 years with no word for eternity.

  He’ll guide your hand through the layers of atmosphere,

  Teach you to tamper with the weather. Swinging it

  Gently back and forth, he’ll swear he’s never shown it

  To anyone else before.

  THE WORLD IS YOUR BEAUTIFUL YOUNGER SISTER

  Seeing her as seldom as you do, it doesn’t change,

  The ire, the shame, the fists you must remember

  To smooth flat just thinking what they did,

  What they promised, then took—those men

  Who offered to pay, to keep, the clan of them

  Lording it over the others like high school boys

  And their kid brothers. Men with interests to protect,

  And mute marble wives. Men who let her

  Beam into their faces, watching her shoulders rise,

  Her astonishing new breasts, making her believe

  It was she who gave permission.

  They plundered her youth, then moved on.

  Those awful, awful men. The ones

  Whose wealth is a kind of filth.

  REALM OF SHADES

  There was still a here, but that’s not where we were, continually turning our backs to something unseen, speaking with just our eyes, getting on with work. What was our work? Our doors wouldn’t lock. We rigged them, hung windows with sheets that broadcast our secrets after dark. People with weapons crept like thieves through their own houses. How did we feel? Like a canary cramped in a cage? Or the cat dying to know what the bird tastes like, swatting the rungs day after day, though the little hinged door never gives? No one hid. No one ran like a dog through the street. The moon traced its slow arc through the sky, drifting in and out of clouds that harbored nothing.

  DRIVING TO OTTAWA

  More and more now we slip

  Into this tone of voice, the hush

  Of people talking about someone

  Who has just died, only

  No one has died. We might be

  Sisters, or old friends, or passengers

  On the road to the airport. Once

  I sat talking this way to a man

  I’d only just met, while dawn

  Floated up and turned all the white

  Hills flush. The momentary kind

  Of love two strangers share,

  Pushing out those long sighs

  And then rushing to fill the lungs

  Again with weightless clear air.

  Looking into the distance

  Blotted out by hills that give way

  Sometimes suddenly to silos

  Or the teetering barns of a past

  That’s gone, but won’t lie down

  And let us grieve it.

  The days

  Are bright but cold. Our shadow

  Spreads like ash across each road.

  How much more will we bury

  In the earth? How much

  In this dark where the earth floats?

  WADE IN THE WATER

  for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters

  One of the women greeted me.

  I love you, she said. She didn’t

  Know me, but I believed her,

  And a terrible new ache

  Rolled over in my chest,

  Like in a room where the drapes

  Have been swept back. I love you,

  I love you, as she continued

  Down the hall past other strangers,

  Each feeling pierced suddenly

  By pillars of heavy light.

  I love you, throughout

  The performance, in every

  Handclap, every stomp.

  I love you in the rusted iron

  Chains someone was made

  To drag until love let them be

  Unclasped and left empty

  In the center of the ring.

  I love you in the water

  Where they pretended to wade,

  Singing that old blood-deep song

  That dragged us to those banks

  And cast us in. I love you,

  The angles of it scraping at

  Each throat, shouldering past

  The swirling dust motes

  In those beams of light

  That whatever we now knew

  We could let ourselves feel, knew

  To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—

  O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—

  O Miraculous Many Gone—

  O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—

  Is this love the trouble you promised?

  II.

  DECLARATION

  He has

  sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people

  He has plundered our—

  ravaged our—

  destroyed the lives of our—

  taking away our—

  abolishing our most valuable—

  and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—

  In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for

  Redress in the most humble terms:

  Our repeated

  Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

  We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration

  and settlement here.

  —taken Captive

  on the high Seas

  to bear—

  THE GREATEST PERSONAL PRIVATION

  The greatest personal privation I have had to endure has been the want of either Patience or Phoebe—tell them I am never, if life is spared us, to be without both of them again.

  —letter from Mary Jones to Elizabeth Maxwell regarding two of her slaves, 30 August 1849

  1.

  It is a painful and harassing business

  Belonging to her. We have had trouble enough,

  Have no comfort or confidence in them,

  And they appear unhappy themselves, no doubt

  From the trouble they have occasioned.

  They could dispose of the whole family

  Without consulting us—Father, Mother,

  Every good cook, washer, and seamstress

  Subject to sale. I believe Good shall be

  Glad if we may have hope of the loss of trouble.

  I remain in glad conscience, at peace with God

  And the world! I have prayed for those people

  Man
y, many, very many times.

  2.

  Much as I should miss Mother,

  I have had trouble enough

  And wish no more to be

  Only waiting to be sent

  Home in peace with God.

  3.

  In every probability

  We may yet discover

  The whole country

  Will not come back

  From the sale of parent

  And child. So far

  As I can see, the loss

  Is great and increasing.

  I know they have desired

  We should not know

  What was for our own good,

  But we cannot be all the cause

  Of all that has been done.

  4.

  We wish to act. We may yet.

  But we have to learn what their

  Character and moral conduct

  Will present. We have it in

  Contemplation to wait and see.

  If good, we shall be glad; if

  Evil, then we must meet evil

  As best we can.

  5.

  Father, mother, son, daughter, man.

  And if that family is sold:

  Please—

  We cannot—

  Please—

  We have got to—

  Please—

  The children—

  Mother and Father and husband and—

  All of you—

  All—

  I have no more—

  How soon and unexpectedly cut off

  Many, many, very many times.

  UNWRITTEN

  Neither do I think it would at all promote the slave’s interest to liberate him in his present degraded state.

  —letter from Mary Jones to Charles Colcock Jones, 24 November 1829

  Much as I should miss the mother, I am

  Persuaded that we might come

  To some understanding about a change

  Of investment. I do not wish

  To influence you in the least degree

  Beyond your own convictions, nor

  To have you subjected to inconveniences