Perversity and Defiance

BASEMENT READINGS

Surprises in his own road

came in the basement

of the church

where he slept with the men

in a small room

monitored,

breath and wonder mixed,

such a privilege

to be with these men

giving everything

they have

to make it

through the night

Jim Bodeen

30 December 2015

LETTER TO HARRY MARTINSON

FROM THE HOMELESS SHELTER

IN THE BASEMENT OF A LUTHERAN CHURCH

CREATED BY EMMIGRANTS OUT WEST

“He who walks the roads should be unarmed.”

            Harry Martinson, The Road, Nobel Laureate

Self-taught Swede I repeated jokes about you

before I knew your name. Orphan from the Parish

turned seaman, turned nomad, you spoke for tramps

becoming one, and becoming one, emerged singular,

and superior to the sanitized, those who stayed

home. Damning too, the efficient and organized.

I find you late in life by accident, trying to know

Scandinavian homeland through books. Your road

in tramp-time walks the poet’s way

half a century later. Other, outcast,

breaker and challenger of norms and stereotypes,

objective portrayer of the outsider,

tramp real and romantic. What is real,

stubbornness of the human spirit raised

to such heights, delighting where it touches

down, and more, touching what’s tender

and thin in human pretense. “In defiance

of his defiance he opened his mind

and let it be illuminated by his best thoughts

that he could remember, by all the best

of what he had seen and heard.”

Add the cost of defiance:

it takes twice as much out of you.

Your tramp is the poet on the way,

becoming true poet. Your poet,

the tramp on the way of the true road.

It is the poet who sees the back side

of the moon. The urge to witness,

the need to see, and walk and be.

Poet and tramp merge, becoming then,

this: “…like a clock which no longer

believes in its action.” A poet’s image

and the tramp’s reality. You knew,

and know, real, Harry Martinson.

Fear in everyone. What you see of fear

has been recorded, is true. And from

across time, I praise your time

with men you walked with. Fierce call.

“I have been sent to count the grasshoppers.”

“And I promise never to pretend to be somebody.”

“And to be perverse to perversity.”

Discovering truth in silence. Tramping

as a way of life. Embarrassment to America,

then and now, without contrition.

The incurably ill the only ones

embracing openly. Excess exposing

excess, loving humility. Unarmed.

Speaking, wallowing in truth, the big all.

In deep admiration,

Jim Bodeen

20-30 December 2015