Maggie Smith – Guernica

Let’s Not Begin

I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932, Claude Cahun 1894-1954. Purchased 2007. Listen: Your browser does not support the audio element.Click here for the mp3. Let’s not begin the poem with and, though it begins that way in spirit: one in a long list of— let’s not call them grievances. I’m trying to love the world, I am, but is it too much to ask for two parts bees vibrating their cups of pollen, humming a perfect A note, to one part sting? Worry and console, worry and console: it’s how I stay in shape. See, I’m sweating. Some nights my daughter cries, I don’t want to be in the dirt, and this is what I call a workout. My heart’s galloping hell and gone from the paddock— I don’t want to be in the dirt because I’ll miss you— and there’s no stopping me. But let’s not end with the heart as horse, fear-lathered, spooked deaf. I’m trying, I am, for her. If I list everything I love about the world, and if the list is long and heavy enough, I can lift it over and over— repetitions, they’re called, reps— to keep my heart on, to keep the dirt off. Let’s begin with bees, and the hum, and the honey singing on my tongue, and the child sleeping at last, and, and, and—