from the desks of loved ones...

Reflections on travel/absence/adventure---take your pick---by two of my favorite poets: Ken Graber (my uncle, writer from Illinois/Wisconsin and one of the smartest people I know), and Elizabeth Bishop, (white girl from Massachusetts who traveled through Latin America translating poetry in the early 20th century). Enjoy!

on thinking of mary’s father. . .

i've seeded in my deep mind
the request for a poem
about a room or rooms people go to

and find the smells of fathers
and lovers and children and friends
who must,
given the weight of their absence,
be needed elsewhere.

the more i listen
the better i hear mothers

describe finding their children
and, without fail,
noting the smell of them,
eyes gone soft and voice hushed:

children pungent-fresh, like pumice and sweat,
minty, soap-shrill and apple-fresh,
unshowered and just showered --
tousled, and new as a star.

do you remember,
as you put them to bed now,
the singularity
of their arrival at birth –
crazed and ravenous to drink
in this new re-creation of yourself?

yesterday, mary called after
one afternoon
in her father’s basement
and all those hours on the floor,
his sweaters crushed to her face.

what would you, i, give today for a
single deep inhalation
of our loves --
father, grandfather, grandmother,
mother, sister, brother,
each friend with their own name --
lost (already) to other worlds?

-Ken Graber


Arrival At Santos

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you

and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?

Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,

descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beaus.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's

skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall

s, New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,

but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps--
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter

do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.

Elizabeth Bishop