Wade in the Water

by Tracy K. Smith

  UNREST IN BATON ROUGE

  after the photo by Jonathan Bachman

  Our bodies run with ink dark blood.

  Blood pools in the pavement’s seams.

  Is it strange to say love is a language

  Few practice, but all, or near all speak?

  Even the men in black armor, the ones

  Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

  Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade

  Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

  We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.

  Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

  Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,

  Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.

  WATERSHED

  200 cows more than 600 hilly acres

  property would have been even larger

  had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for

  waste from its Washington Works factory

  where J was employed

  did not want to sell

  but needed money poor health

  mysterious ailments

  Not long after the sale cattle began to act

  deranged

  footage shot on a camcorder

  grainy intercut with static

  Images jump repeat sound accelerates

  slows down

  quality of a horror movie

  the rippling shallow water the white ash

  trees shedding their leaves

  a large pipe

  discharging green water

  a skinny red cow

  hair missing back humped

  a dead black calf in snow its eye

  a brilliant chemical blue

  a calf’s bisected head

  liver heart stomachs kidneys

  gall bladder some dark some green

  cows with stringy tails malformed hooves

  lesions red receded eyes suffering slobbering

  staggering like drunks

  It don’t look like

  anything I’ve been into before

  I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.

  R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable

  It just felt like the right thing to do

  a great

  opportunity to use my background for people who

  really needed it

  R: filed a federal suit

  pulled permits

  land deeds

  a letter that mentioned

  a substance at the landfill

  PFOA

  perfluorooctanoic acid

  a soap-like agent used in

  Scotchgard™

  Teflon™

  PFOA: was to be incinerated or

  sent to chemical waste facilities

  not to be flushed into water or sewers

  DuPont:

  pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds

  into the Ohio River

  dumped tons of PFOA sludge

  into open unlined pits

  PFOA:

  increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits

  results replicated in dogs

  caused birth defects in rats

  caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and

  liver tumors in lab animals

  possible DNA damage from exposure

  bound to plasma proteins in blood

  was found circulating through each organ

  high concentrations in the blood of factory workers

  children of pregnant employees had eye defects

  dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond

  the property line

  entered the water table

  concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit

  study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer

  worth $1 billion in annual profit

  It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before

  Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.

  DuPont:

  did not make this information public

  declined to disclose this finding

  considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic

  and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time

  decided against it

  decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge

  bought 66 acres from a low-level employee

  at the Washington Works facility

  J needed money

  had been in poor health

  a dead black calf

  its eye chemical blue

  cows slobbering

  staggering like drunks

  I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable “God’s eye view.” I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors, no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.

  D’s first husband had been a chemist

  When you

  worked at DuPont in this town you could have

  everything you wanted

  DuPont paid for his education

  secured him a mortgage paid a generous salary

  even gave him a free supply of PFOA

  He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.

  which she used

  as soap in the family’s dishwasher

  I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.

  Sometimes

  her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,

  vomiting—“Teflon flu”

  an emergency hysterectomy

  a second surgery

  I could tell the doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.

  Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer

  or that a family member had died

  W who had cancer had died of a heart attack

  Two years later W’s wife died of cancer

  They knew this stuff was harmful

  and they put it in the water anyway

  I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.

  PFOA detected in:

  American blood banks

  blood or vital organs of:

  Atlantic salmon

  swordfish

  striped mullet

  gray seals

  common cormorants

  Alaskan polar bears

  brown pelicans

  sea turtles

  sea eagles

  California sea lions

  Laysan albatrosses on a

  wildlife refuge in the

  middle of the North

  Pacific Ocean

  Viewing the myriad human faces with an incredible, intimate, and profound love.

  This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.

  We see a situation

  that has gone

  from Washington Works

  All that was important in life was the love we felt.

  to statewide

  All that was made, said, done, or
even thought without love was undone.

  to everywhere

  it’s global

  In my particular case, God took the form of a luminous warm water. It does not mean that a luminous warm water is God. It is just that, for me, it was experiencing the luminous warm water that I felt the most connection with the eternal.

  POLITICAL POEM

  If those mowers were each to stop

  at the whim, say, of a greedy thought,

  and then the one off to the left

  were to let his arm float up, stirring

  the air with that wide, slow, underwater

  gesture meaning Hello! and You there!

  aimed at the one more than a mile away

  to the right. And if he in his work were to pause,

  catching that call by sheer wish, and send

  back his own slow one-armed dance,

  meaning Yes! and Here! as if threaded

  to a single long nerve, before remembering

  his tool and shearing another message

  into the earth, letting who can say how long

  graze past until another thought, or just the need to know,

  might make him stop and look up again at the other,

  raising his arm as if to say something like Still?

  and Oh! and then to catch the flicker of joy

  rise up along those other legs and flare

  into another bright Yes! that sways a moment

  in the darkening air, their work would carry them

  into the better part of evening, each mowing

  ahead and doubling back, then looking up to catch

  sight of his echo, sought and held

  in that instant of common understanding,

  the God and Speed of it coming out only after

  both have turned back to face to the sea of Yet

  and Slow. If they could, and if what glimmered

  like a fish were to dart back and forth across

  that wide wordless distance, the day, though gone,

  would never know the ache of being done.

  If they thought to, or would, or even half-wanted,

  their work—the humming human engines

  pushed across the grass, and the grass, blade

  after blade, assenting—would take forever.

  But I love how long it would last.

  IV.

  ETERNITY

  Landscape Painting

  It is as if I can almost still remember.

  As if I once perhaps belonged here.

  The mountains a deep heavy green, and

  The rocky steep drop to the waters below.

  The peaked roofs, the white-plastered

  Brick. A clothesline in a neighbor’s yard

  Made of sticks. The stone path skimming

  The ridge. A ladder asleep against a house.

  What is the soul allowed to keep? Every

  Birth, every small gift, every ache? I know

  I have knelt just here, torn apart by loss. Lazed

  On this grass, counting joys like trees: cypress,

  Blue fir, dogwood, cherry. Ageless, constant,

  Growing down into earth and up into history.

  Lama Temple

  It was a shock to be allowed in, for once

  Not held back by a painted iron fence.

  And to take it in with just my eyes (No Photos

  Signs were discreet, yet emphatic). Coins,

  Bills on a tray. Two women and then a man

  Bowed before a statue to pray. Outside

  Above the gates, a sprung balloon

  And three kites swam east on a high fast

  Current. And something about a bird

  Flapping hard as it crossed my line of sight—

  The bliss it seemed to make and ride without

  Ever once gliding or slowing—the picture of it

  Meant, suddenly, youth, and I couldn’t help it,

  I had to look away.

  Nanluoguxiang Alley

  Every chance I get, every face I see, I find myself

  Searching for a glimpse of myself, my daughter, my sons.

  More often, I find there former students, old lovers,

  Friends I knew once and had until now forgotten. My

  Sisters, a Russian neighbor, a red-haired American actor.

  And on and on, uncannily, as though all of us must be

  Buried deep within each other.

  Songzhuang Art Village

  You pull canvases from racks: red daisies,

  Peonies in a blue vase, an urn of lilies

  Like spirits flown from the dead. A self-

  Portrait in a white dress, faceless but for one eye,

  And all around you what could be empty

  Coffins or guitar cases, or dark leaves

  On a swirling sea. On a column in a black frame

  Hangs a photo of your mother, a smiling

  Girl in an army coat. Can any of us save ourselves,

  You once wrote, save another? Below her,

  All beard, practically, and crevassed brow,

  Tolstoy stares in the direction of what once

  Must have seemed the future.

  Mutianyu, Great Wall

  Farther ahead, another tourist loses his footing

  And grabs hold of a brick,

  which comes off

  In his hand, crumbles where it lands.

  ASH

  Strange house we must keep and fill.

  House that eats and pleads and kills.

  House on legs. House on fire. House infested

  With desire. Haunted house. Lonely house.

  House of trick and suck and shrug.

  Give-it-to-me house. I-need-you-baby house.

  House whose rooms are pooled with blood.

  House with hands. House of guilt. House

  That other houses built. House of lies

  And pride and bone. House afraid to be alone.

  House like an engine that churns and stalls.

  House with skin and hair for walls.

  House the seasons singe and douse.

  House that believes it is not a house.

  BEATIFIC

  I watch him bob across the intersection,

  Squat legs bowed in black sweatpants.

  I watch him smile at nobody, at our traffic

  Stopped to accommodate his slow going.

  His arms churn the air. His comic jog

  Carries him nowhere. But it is as if he hears

  A voice in our idling engines, calling him

  Lithe, Swift, Prince of Creation. Every least leaf

  Shivers in the sun, while we sit, bothered,

  Late, captive to this thing commanding

  Wait for this man. Wait for him.

  CHARITY

  She is like a squat old machine,

  Off-kilter but still chugging along

  The uphill stretch of sidewalk

  On Harrison Street, handbag slung

  Crosswise and, I’m guessing, heavy.

  And oh, the set of her face, her brow’s

  Profound tracks, her mouth cinched,

  Lips pressed flat. Watching her

  Bend forward to tussle with gravity,

  Watching the berth she allows each

  Foot (as if one is not on civil

  Terms with the other), watching

  Her shoulders braced as if lashed

  By step after step after step, and

  Her eyes’ determination not to

  Shift, or blink, or rise, I think:

  I am you, one day out of five,

  Tired, empty, hating what I carry

  But afraid to lay it down, stingy,

  Angry, doing violence to others

  By the sheer freight of my gloom,

  Halfway home, wanting to stop, to quit

  But keeping going mostly out of spite.

  IN YOUR CONDITION

  That whole time away, I stayed dizzy. Every
where,

  Meats whirled round in a pit. Waiters crashed in

  And out like the tide with trays and trays of fish.

  Every chance, I slept: in the bathroom between courses,

  A whole half-hour laid out like a corpse atop the bed.

  I saw the beach from a castle in the hills. I climbed there

  On Sunday carrying my purse, snapping the same pictures

  From the year before, to be polite. Windows that belonged

  To the queen maintain their perfect shape, though the glass

  She would have paced behind is gone. Grass spreads

  Like intrigue where once were rugs, and a double metal rail

  Suggests a wall. Along a hall and up slick winding steps,

  There was a view down into the valley, but I couldn’t linger.

  The baby kept me queasy, hungry, made my dress hike up

  Though I was only eight weeks in. At a tavern on my last night,

  I had to stand outside to breathe. I ordered bottle after bottle

  Of water, though the red wine shimmered like nectar.

  Flying home, I snuck a wedge of brie, and wept

  Through a movie starring Angelina Jolie.

  4½

  Morning finds her curled like a prawn

  Around a stuffed blue Pegasus, or the smallest

  Prawn-pink lion. Or else she’s barging

  Into my room, and leaning in close so

  It’s her hair I wake to—that coarse, dark

  Heaven of knots and purple fluff. And

  She’s hungry, but first she has to pee—

  “Pee! Pee!” she sings, hopping in place, trying

  to staunch off the wild ravenous river

  she carries, until I’m awake for real, saying

  “Go! Go! Hurry before you wet the floor!”

  And then she tries, and succeeds, or else stands

  Bereft, relieved, as a pool trickles out

  Around her feet. She’s like an island

  Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top

  Of the only mountain. She’s like the sole

  Incongruous goat tethered to the tree,

  Smiling almost as you approach, scraping

  The ground with its horns, and then—

  Lickety split—lurching hard, daring

  The rope to snap. She’s hungry. She wants