A Stone

The former blogger known as Abdul-Walid recently sent two poems which I am pleased to publish here. The photograph was taken last week. I had been thinking about the poems and wondering about a suitable image: rocks wouldn't do, and not just any stone. After my mother died, the people who live around the same lake sent two beautiful rose plants to the house in her memory. I went out to the garden to plant them. On the four corners of the raised bed I noticed that my mother had placed four stones - all round cobblestones, similar to this one, tumbled and rolled under the glacier which once scoured our area of central New York. They are so numerous that some local houses and barns even have cobblestone facings or foundations. This was the best one: inscrutable, enigmatic, beckoning.

EVEN A STONE

Even a stone
is too wonderful
for me.
But I must
begin somewhere.

There are days
when a stone is all
I can meet, it alone,
or at most a poem
into which
its secret has
been poured. But

even a stone
is too wonderful
for me,
even there
I cannot
begin.

----

TO A STONE

Final,
ground's eye,
confide in me.

Let me not be
like those who say:
“the sky is blue.”

Enough with
this describing.
What you have hidden
you have hidden.

Ferns, horses,
people, gods
have all gone
another open way.

But don’t say a word:
I couldn’t bear it
were you, too,

to mar this small
longed-for
silence.

--Abdul-Walid

Comments

[Rachel]

What beautiful words.

(o)

[patry]

These recall Francis of Assisi, who would not step on a stone because he considered them so sacred.

Stunning.

[dale]

(o)

(Okay, I couldn't help that.)

"Even a stone is too wonderful for me." Yes. All the time.

[E]

Beautiful indeed. Thank you for sharing.

[Natalie]

Too wonderful, not only the poems but the outlook. Which I share completely ("You are forgetting to be amazed" said the bird in the bath to Augustine).

[leslee]

Oh, I love these. Thank you.

[Dave]

A-W - the second one in particular is as good I thinbk as any of Charles Simic's stone poems, which I suspect might have been one of your influences here. Thanks for sharing them - and thanks to Beth for finding the right words of introduction and the perfect accompanying photo.

[Abdul-Walid]

Thanks everyone.

It was humbling to be present to these poems (I prefer to think of them that way, rather than to simply say "I wrote them"). And it's wonderful have them printed here where they are guaranteed to have thoughtful readers.

Dave, Simic is one of my favorite poets, as you know. But I don't actually know his stone poems. It's peculiar, isn't it? I do remember him mentioning getting back to basics, writing about stones, in an interview once, and that might have been a subliminal influence. Some stone poems I know and love include those by Uncle Seamus and Tomas Transtroemer.

Everyday is a new day. Thanks all for your good comments.

[qB]

What I want to know (although of course I don't have to at all) but what reading and looking at the whole ensemble made me wonder was which came first, the picture or the poems. And I don't have to need to know at all because they've found each other and together transcend the temporality of my question. Thank you both.

[Beth]

Poems first. Now you know.

[qB]

If I'd been attentive I would have realised. Thanks for not hitting me over the head with it.