THE POETS AT HIGH CAMP

 

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 17^th 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