The extraordinary Janine Pommy Vega passed away two days ago—a loss for her family and friends and a loss for American poetry. Here are a couple of her poems, the first written in 1996 and the second in 2000, both published in The Green Piano:
Christmas at Woodbourne
Sodden cardboard manger
at the front gate
to Woodbourne Prison
shrouded hills, lone gull’s
screech stop the searchlight
Who says we are separate
from what we love?
Ramakrishna
would call that ignorance
Separate voices, separate
troubles, separate cells—
connectedness is
inseparable
from the consistency
of grace.
*
Telling the Beads
I can’t remember the name for
telling the beads
one by one they roll through
my fingers, left hand
right hand
each syllable a step
two steps
up the mountain
I don’t remember when
I learned the freedom
of repeated
sounds
a stone dropped
into ripples widening
the sound a rope pulling
me up the mountain
Castaneda curled in his fingers
and crossed his eyes
so space rushed in
and ambushed the walker
One hundred and eight is four
twenty-sevens, beads on a string
sometimes I remember to count
sometimes I forget
The walls
separating one from oneness
disappear
like sugar in water
like sweat rolling off the side
of a face, the boundless
catches up and we are
empty in that joy.