THE POETS AT HIGH CAMP FOR JACK KRANZ
I.
...nothing draws
me to you. Everything pulls
away from me here
in the noon. You are the delirious
youth of bee. The
drunkedness of the wave, the power of the heat.
--Pablo Neruda
You carried your
own burden and very soon
your symptoms of
creeping privilege disappeared.
--Seamus Heaney
A tattered coat
upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its
hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter
in its mortal dress
--William Butler
Yeats
We were on a
chairlift on the mountain,
skiing, of all
places, and it was my mountain, too,
and we had begun
talking about it
at the memorial
luncheon of our friend,
after the Catholic
Mass. We were the ones
reciting poetry on
pine tables in the lodge,
and it was after St.
Patrick’s Day. The sun
was out, and you
dazed me, infrastructure man,
old friend, and it
was you reciting Seamus Heaney
and Yeats. I had
retrieved Patrick Kavanah
from my backpack
carried to the mountain
the week before. You
had returned from
Kabul, from ten
years in Afghanistan,
building, but you
hadn’t just returned,
you had been back
long enough
to build that dream
house for Janie,
the one that looked
like, well, the one
you modeled after
houses in the desert,
with walls of
shimmering, and even,
wind-swept and
moving, sand—and
we were on the
chairlift
in afternoon sun,
when almost under
your breath, you
mentioned, me hardly
hearing, and asking
you to repeat, three times,
the bridge on the
Drina. What is it?
What is that? I
asked. The Drina,
Ivo Andric. From the
workshop
with the women in
Kabul. At lunch,
though, it was
Seamus
and the Republic of
Conscience.
It was Afghanistan,
NGOs,
workshop in Kabul,
three nuns,
holy ones, and
Marina LeGree
teaching young women
to climb
through Ascend,
Jack, you talking,
She’d fly in and
out of Pakistan
from Florida, a
finger stick,
sharing a 20-mile
border with China.
Women. No security.
I was in her workshop
in the Kabul Star
Hotel. She took young
women up Mt.
Nawshaq, 24,580 feet.
We heard RPG fire,
you know
what I mean, faster
than
the speed of sound.
36 Taliban men
got up that morning
knowing
they were going to
die.
They hit the Indian
Embassy
100 dead
immediately, right…
Right into the Irish
poets,
Heaney, Yeats.
(And I’m still
carrying Kavanaugh’s Pegasus
from last week—that
horse, too. Here!)
This is no country
for old men,--
And Neruda’s brown
and agile child.
Jack Kranz, builder
in Afghanistan
one of ten children,
can still memorize the poems,
Jack the first
Catholic CO in Yakima
when America flew
into Vietnam.
(Jack drove Ken Capp
and I to Berkeley
that weekend to hear
Rigoberta Menchu
before she was
awarded the Nobel
and I returned
swirling with Mari Sandoz
and Crazy Horse,
archetypal images
of Latin American
women,
Malinche, Guadalupe,
Sor Juana.
Abrecaminos,
open-the-way-ones,
from good woman bad
woman,
the one you want
Saturday night
the one you want
Sunday morning.)
That Jack Kranz, the
two of us riding
the chairlift,
making our turns
after these decades,
Jack talking
about the bridge on
the Drina.
What’s that, Jack?
What bridge?
Say that again, I
didn’t get it.
What skiing is, edge
and release,
how the fall line
changes during descent,
after our first
great losses,
weight on the down
hill ski,
and the natural
process of unweighting,
what it is like
around sandwiches
pulled from
backpacks in plastic bags.
The gold mosaic
of the wall,
chance windows of
poetry or prayer
and weep to their
presumptions to hold...
Everything packed
into chocolate chip cookie.
And the Russians in
Kabul, Jack.
Do you know Svetlana
Alex--
Zinky boys,
Jack interrupts—Yes--
the coffins.
That whispered
thread--
Jack’s voice
coming from a wool mask
in wind on a
mountain chairlift,
That bridge, on
the river.
All of it and
everything on the mountain.
I must have that
book,
Ivo Andric,
ambassador in house arrest.
How I first heard.
And this is what
happened next.
II. THERE’S MORE
THAN ONE BRIDGE CROSSING THE DRINA
So
men learned from the angels of God how to build bridges, and
therefore, after fountains, the greatest blessing is to build a
bridge and the greatest sin to interfere with it, for every bridge,
from a tree trunk crossing a mountain stream to this great erection
of Mehmed Pasha, has its guardian angel who cares for it and
maintains it as long as God has ordained that it should stand.
Ivo
Andric
A
voice behind me calls out,
Can
I join you on this chairlift up the mountain?
...the
words of cures and chains to heal dumbness interrupted.
All
the Irish lines
My
soul is an old horse,
gone
like exhaled breath
Hop
on, young man.
Tell
me about those boards you’re riding on.
Skis
bound into a mono ski? Or snowboard?
A
board. I’m a dog. Prairie Dog. Love this board.
Where
are you coming from.
Me,
Tri-cities. No.
No,
no, your soul, where is it from!
Jack
this did happen like this.
Not
tri-cities, Bosnia.
And
why should I walk among the dead?
You’ll
be dead for a million years.
Bosnia?
No. Not Bosnia.
Do
you know the Drina River?
I
know General Mattis, too! he says.
He
signed my books, two of them,
one
for a friend who’s a Green Beret.
He
hates being called Mad Dog!
Who?
Wait.
Mattis
hates the handle. He hates it.
Do
you know his call sign?
Call
Sign Mattis is CHAOS:
Colonel
Has Another Outstanding Solution.
But
the Drina, the River Drina.
Oh!
Ivo Andric!
I
have his book in Serb!
It’s
like reading Shakespeare!
But
you’ve no accent!
We
came when I was three.
The
ESL teacher took one listen
and
says, Get out of here.
We
went back when I was eight.
But
the Drina. Did you cross the river. Can I buy you coffee.
We’re
from Tuzla.
I’ll
draw you a map.
Let
me see your notebook.
Bosnia
is here.
Mom
was born here in Croatia.
Dad
here in Serbia.
This
is a 17th Century map.
Here’s
the Drina.
Oh,
funny. Not in the book.
There
are many bridges
crossing
the Drina.
I
crossed at Tuzla and went to the zoo.
Then
I went to the lake.
My
name is Gordon Givric.
I
am 27.
He
shows me his poem to his girl friend,
reads
it to me. Do you write poems, he asks.
His
girl friend’s girlfriend says,
You’re
the one, Gordon.
Thanks
for this, we say to each other.
And
I am a black candle burning in a snow storm.
III.
FOR JACK KRANZ
He
therefor desired me when I got home
to
consider myself a representative
and
to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Seamus
Heaney, From the Republic of Conscience
In
my reading our positions are permanent.
We
are not itinerant or interim.
This
is understanding that has been given
from
mountain residencies.
It
is good work.
Jim
Bodeen
16
March—7 April 2023
Good
Friday
White
Pass, Cascade Mountains, Washington State
Posts
