"Freedom, Love And Revolt" by Frank Stanford

[raven_cromwell]

So as some of y'all may know, I'm an absolute poetry geek, which was such a foreign concept to the me of five years ago that honestly I'm still kinda boggling. But someone on Tumblr shoved Mary Oliver's Wild Geese at me. It was so beautiful, spoke so eloquently of love woven with trauma: of love not despite trauma but because! of it, topped off by some of the most gorgeous nature descriptions I'd ever seen, and I was a goner.

Prior to this year, I tried to pretend that my poetry fixation was a thing that could be filled by the scattered bits that came across my tumblr dash, but in April at the height of national poetry month, I broke down and admitted I needed more of the new shiny thing in my life and subscribed to two lists that give me a hit every day.

There're certain pieces that dig their claws into my brain and just. will. not. release, and this one by Stanford's one of them. TW for death and violence. I think this one sticks for me cause Stanford gives no identifying details of the historical period; it's a eulogy to anyone who's thought or said or done the thing deemed wrong by the authority or majority of the time. People who just wanna be himan: to smile and laugh with their beloveds, and who don't even get any dignity, much less a decent life. Again, TW for death and violence:

They caught them.
They were sitting at a table in the kitchen.
It was early.
They had on bathrobes.
They were drinking coffee and smiling.
She had one of his cigarillos in her fingers.
She had her legs tucked up under her in the chair.
They saw them through the window.
She thought of them stepping out of a bath
And him wrapping cloth around her.
He thought of her waking up in a small white building,
He thought of stones settling into the ground.
Then they were gone.
Then they came in through the back.
Her cat ran out.
The house was near the road.
She didn’t like the cat going out.
They stayed at the table.
The others were out of breath.
The man and the woman reached across the table.
They were afraid, they smiled.
The others poured themselves the last of the coffee
Burning their tongues.
The man and the woman looked at them.
They didn’t say anything.
The man and the woman moved closer to each other,
The round table between them.
The stove was still on and burned the empty pot.
She started to get up.
One of them shot her.
She leaned over the table like a schoolgirl doing her lessons.
She thought about being beside him, being asleep.
They took her long grey socks
Put them over the barrel of a rifle
And shot him.
He went back in his chair, holding himself.
She told him hers didn’t hurt much,
Like in the fall when everything you touch
Makes a spark.
He thought about her getting up in the dark
Wrapping a quilt around herself
And standing in the doorway.
She asked the men if they shot them again
Not to hurt their faces.
One of them lit him one of his cigarettes.
He thought what it would be like
Being children together.
He was dead before he finished it.
She asked them could she take it out of his mouth.
So it wouldn’t burn his lips.
She reached over and touched his hair.
She thought about him walking through the dark singing.
She died on the table like that,
Smoke coming out of his mouth.

Comments

[delphi]

Oh. I don't think I'd read this, or if I had, not in a very long time. Thank you for posting it.

[raven_cromwell]

You're more than welcome. Especially glad you enjoyed since your post and jams have been hitting all my musical buttons of late! The Lang one, especially, was just out-of-this-world phenomenal, and made me wonder if you'd ever been lucky enough to hear her tribute performance of Hallelujah (hoping that link survives Canadian filtering. :)

But yeah, glad you enjoyed; I, too, am new to Stanford's work and I wanna check out more of it.

[delphi]

You made my night. I think I probably would have watched that back in 2006, but I haven't since, and it's just stellar.

[chamerion]

Thanks for this. As you say, it's the lack of identifying details (and thus the universality) that makes it so poignant. It'll be sticking in my head for a while now, too.