nudging the tongue awake…

from my anthology of (a)merican poems that should be read

Yusef Komunyakaa

Rhythm Method

If you were sealed inside a box
within a box deep in a forest,
with no birdsongs, no crickets
rubbing legs together, no leaves
letting go of mottled branches,
you'd still hear the rhythm
of your heart. A red tide
of beached fish oscillates in sand,
copulating beneath a full moon,
& we can call this the first
rhythm because sex is what
nudged the tongue awake
& taught the hand to hit
drums & embrace reed flutes
before they were worked
from wood & myth. Up
& down, in & out, the piston
drives a dream home. Water
drips till it sculpts a cup
into a slab of stone.
At first, no bigger
than a thimble, it holds
joy, but grows to measure
the rhythm of loneliness
that melts sugar in tea.
There's a season for snakes
to shed rainbows on the grass,
for locust to chant out of the dunghill.
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes
is a confirmation the skin
sings to hands. The Mantra
of spring rain opens the rose
& spider lily into shadow,
& someone plays the bones
till they rise & live
again. We know the whole weight
depends on small silences
we fit ourselves into.
High heels at daybreak
is the saddest refrain
If you can see blues
in the ocean, light & dark
can feel worms ease through
a subterranean path
beneath each footstep,
Baby, you got rhythm.

*

“Rhythm Method,” a poem from Komunyakaa’s Thieves of Paradise, begins in silence – lost in a dark, troubled place, an uncertain world of if. The poet draws the reader’s attention to what is not present. This forces a turning inward, toward the sound of the heart muscle – the beating here, however, is not glazed romanticism but is the living sound of flesh. Emotions come later – transporting this piece into a Komunyakaa-patented physical poetic expression.

His focus on the senses is rich: “red tide /of beached fish oscillates in sand” and, later,

                        sex is what
nudged the tongue awake
& taught the hand to hit
drums & embrace reed flutes
before they were worked
from wood & myth

He maintains the barrage: the piston drives and water drips to lead from joy to loneliness – a marvelous shift in the poem. There’s always the intimation of danger in a Komunyakka poem, yet he’s able to balance threat with great beauty. Note these lines: “a season for snakes / to shed rainbows on the grass, / for locust to chant out of the dunghill.” The next line, effective here in its music – “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes” ... the astonishing “confirmation the skin / sings to hands” – gives way to the mantra of rain. Again, this is accomplished with a blend of joy and fear in the rain that “opens the rose / & spider lily into shadow”. Komunyakka then introduces an apocalyptic note, with a nod to the prophet Ezekiel, in the bones that rise and live.

The force of the poem settles into three lines of intense and stunning clarity:

            We know whole weight
depends on small silences
we fit ourselves into.

The sound of walking at daybreak echoes the loneliness of the poem’s early lines. Add to the sight of blues on the ocean – here the ocean must be an immense well of sadness – the friction of light and dark. Komunyakka then finishes by moving beneath the walk, beneath the clicking, to the writhing worm beneath each step. This enlarges the possibilities of rhythm in a poem that begins and ends in darkness.

What’s irresistible is the direct and forceful language of a poem that’s so full of dark, wonderful surprises. And, baby, this one has the talk.