For those who try to heal the scourge of gun violence…
L’Anima Semplicetta
Dear Mr. St. John: Thank you
for thinking of me. I am fine,
though I have no words
to say how it is here. You ask
what you should do. Set down
your poem about the man who’s blinded
by the smoke, while climbing up
the Mount of Purgatory and about
the “simple soul.” Take back
the bullet from my brain.
Pick up my school-books and my hat
from the pavement. Follow
the stray shot back. When you get
to Marshall, take the gun from his hand.
And re-collect the smoke. Tell him
I’ll come sometime, to loose
the knot of anger from his neck. But you
must keep on walking, to my school. Climb up
its seven stone steps. And on the fourth step, sit
and weigh the flattened bullet in your hand.
It is such a light, slight thing;
and it is not. It is all the weight
of our whole world. It is what
we make. Now do something that will not
make sense: touch it to your lips —
this cold, dark coal — then set it just
beneath your tongue. Of course
it leaves a bitter taste. Let i
dissolve. Let it become your bones.
Let it cloud your brain. Let it impair
your speech. And let your tongue,
at all the worst of times, suddenly
speak the obvious. Let it never
stop speaking the obvious. Yours, Ebony.
Richard St. John
from The Pure Inconstancy of Grace
(Truman State University Press, 2005)
Why I’m Thankful for #ThisIsOurLane