FORGIVE YOURSELF FOR SEEING IT WRONG
under the rosequartz clouds even a man glimmers
like a bride his hatchet a bouquet I am waiting
for his tears to turn pearl ache and its flag
of unfurling twilight the telephone wires make a strange harp
over our heads and if we weren’t here who
would talk about heaven root-ridden and a little afraid
of the notion that light has a tendency to keep going
like my father on his motorcycle maybe I’ve spent too much
time listening to the distant rain on the rooftops of people who may
kill each other and believed it’s not too late for me
to make this about love the man in the field and his farmtruck
even now I hear him his voice such a split of lark and lemon
this crooked intimacy how the last train mixes its smoke with the dusk
and the cattle bed down around the chevy taking it
as one of their own light sinking unable to chime and helpless to touch
--C.T. Salazar
From Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking
This poem was written in wrestling with the strange and surreal violence that comes with a loved one experiencing rapidly developing Alzheimer's—C.T. Salazar
C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Books 2022) was named a 2023 finalist for the Theodore Roethke Memorial Award. His poems have most recently appeared in West Branch, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty-Nine): C.T. Salazar
C.T. Salazar’s “Forgive Yourself for Seeing it Wrong” is a poem of ructions and unions, of doubted and confirmed precision, of the tearing of heaven. It begins with surprising and lovely “rosequartz clouds,” a man (a farmer) astonishingly like a “bride,” his hatchet (violent, indispensable farm tool) “a bouquet” as the poet speaker waits for “his tears to turn pearl”—another unlooked-for transformation. Where do the tears come from? Like so much in this poem, we take it on faith that such a man of rough labor would have them, would fly “ache and its flag of unfurling twilight.” It’s a world, we are given to know, of scarce-acknowledged sadness, where, in another astonishing image, “the telephone wires make a strange harp over our heads.” People are speaking with one another, unseen and unheard, untouched by the thrumming solitude here, a solitude that somehow “makes” the poet’s lone voice, joined with a “we” that includes the reader, “talk about heaven," but are “root-ridden and a little afraid / of the notion that light has a tendency to keep going . . . .” Suddenly, for the first time, the ethereal summons the personal: “like my father on his motorcycle.” We are given a double beat to think about this before we are told, “maybe I have spent too much / time listening to the distant rain on the rooftops of people who may / kill each other”—what a telling evocation of romanticism and its antidote. I think that Salazar can be likened to Ashbery in his radically inconsistent meditations that surprise us out of one way of thinking and into another, and often back again; that navigate between ordinary life and a lustrous transcendence.
After more thought beats, the poem turns again: “and believed it’s not too late for me / to make this about love” [beat beat beat] –should we believe it now is “too late”? The poem retrenches to its plainest scene: “the man in the field and his farmtruck.” But then it swoops outward into memory: “even now I hear him his voice such a split of lark and lemon” (this a voice we taste), “this crooked intimacy” a style of affection created in its clash of words. C.T. Salazar’s moving poem ends in powerful mixture of involuntary, mistaken, and thwarted intimacies that could be the story of our lives, telling “how the last train mixes its smoke with the dusk / and the cattle bed down around the Chevy taking it / as one of their own light sinking unable to chime and helpless to touch”—the cattle’s assumption as strangely affecting as Elizabeth Bishop’s famous moose's when she ("It's a she!") “sniffs at" at the traveling bus’s “hot hood.”
The final three words, "helpless to touch," radiate among light and the poet and us—sad and glad to be included in this poem as it passes understanding.
-Angela Ball
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