Morning Haiku Read online

  Morning Haiku

  SONIA SANCHEZ

  Beacon Press, Boston

  For Miyoshi Smith

  and

  Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

  and

  Njeeri Wa Ngugi

  Let me wear the day

  Well so when it reaches you

  You will enjoy it.

  Sonia Sanchez

  The best thing you can do is to be a woman and

  stand before the world and speak your heart.

  Abbey Lincoln

  contents

  preface: haikuography

  10 haiku (for Max Roach)

  duende

  dance haiku

  14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)

  10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals)

  4 haiku (for Nubia)

  21 haiku (for Odetta)

  3 haiku (for Richard Long, for Tanabata festival, and for Luisa Moreno)

  4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)

  7 haiku (for Ray Brown)

  6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney)

  2 haiku (on viewing John Dowell’s Tranescape)

  4 haiku (for Max Roach)

  sister haiku (for Pat)

  15 haiku (for Toni Morrison)

  5 haiku (for Brother Damu)

  6 haiku (for Elizabeth Catlett in Cuernavaca)

  5 haiku

  2 haiku (for Ras Baraka)

  6 haiku (for Oprah Winfrey)

  5 haiku (for Sarah Vaughan)

  2 haiku

  9 haiku (for Freedom’s Sisters)

  5 love haiku

  7 haiku (for St. Augustine)

  6 haiku (for Maya Angelou)

  haiku woman (La mujer de los ojos)

  memory haiku

  haiku poem: 1 year after 9/11

  explanatory notes

  preface: haikuography

  From the moment i found a flowered book high up on a shelf at the 8th Street Bookshop in New York City, a book that announced Japanese haiku; from the moment i opened that book, and read the first haiku, i slid down onto the floor and cried and was changed. i had found me. It’s something to find yourself in a poem—to discover the beauty that i knew resided somewhere in my twenty-one-year-old bloodstream; from the moment i asked the clerk in the bookstore if i was pronouncing this haiku word correctly, i knew that i had discovered me, had found an awakening, an awareness that i was connected not only to nature, but to the nature of myself and others; from the moment i saw the blood veins behind beautiful eyes, the fluids in teeth, and the enamel in tongues, i knew that haiku were no short-term memory, but a long memory.

  Patricia Donegan shares the idea of “haiku mind”—“a simple yet profound way of seeing our everyday world and living our lives with the awareness of the moment expressed in haiku—and to therefore hopefully inspire others to live with more clarity, compassion, and peace.”

  i knew when i heard young poets say in verse and conversation: i’m gonna put you on “pause,” i heard their “haiku nature,” their haikuography. They were saying, i gotta make you slow down and check out what’s happening in your life. In the world.

  So this haiku slows us down, makes us stay alive and breathe with that one breath that it takes to recite a haiku.

  This haiku, this tough form disguised in beauty and insight, is like the blues, for they both offer no solutions, only a pronouncement, a formal declaration—an acceptance of pain, humor, beauty and non-beauty, death and rebirth, surprise and life. Always life. Both always help us to maintain memory and dignity.

  What i found in the 8th Street Bookshop was extraordinary and ordinary: Silence. Crystals. Cornbread and greens. Laughter. Brocades. The sea. Beethoven. Coltrane. Spring and winter. Blue rivers. Dreadlocks. Blues. A waterfall. Empty mountains. Bamboo. Bodegas. Ancient generals. Lamps. Fireflies. Sarah Vaughan—her voice exploding in the universe, returning to earth in prayer. Plum blossoms. Silk and steel. Cante jondo. Wine. Hills. Flesh. Perfume. A breath inhaled and held. Silence.

  And i found that my mouth and the river are one and the same.

  i set sail

  in tall grass

  no air stirs.

  Sonia Sanchez

  10 haiku (for Max Roach 1)

  1.

  Nothing ends

  every blade of grass

  remembering your sound

  2.

  your sounds exploding

  in the universe return

  to earth in prayer

  3.

  as you drummed

  your hands kept

  reaching for God

  4.

  the morning sky

  so lovely imitates

  your laughter

  5.

  you came warrior

  clear your music

  kissing our spines

  6.

  feet tapping

  singing, impeach

  our blood

  7.

  you came drumming

  sweet life on

  sails of flesh

  8.

  your fast beat

  riding the air settles

  in our bones

  9.

  your drums

  soloing our breaths into

  the beat . . . unbeat

  10.

  your hands

  shimmering on the

  legs of rain.

  duende

  1.

  My hands

  abandon me

  to bloodletting

  2.

  my breasts

  are dancing in

  silver

  3.

  my feet

  are crying

  blues

  4.

  my thighs

  sing the flesh

  off the guitar

  5.

  my breath

  is indecent as

  my teeth

  6.

  aaaaaahhhhhhh

  yeyeyeyeyeye

  i am still standing . . .

  dance haiku

  1.

  Do we dance

  death in a fast lane

  of salsa

  2.

  or minuet

  death with an aristocrat’s

  pointed toe

  3.

  do we ease

  into death with

  workingclass abandon

  4.

  or position our

  legs in middleclass

  laughter

  5.

  do we swallow

  death in a fast gulp

  of morning pills

  6.

  or factor death

  into prime years

  in our throats?

  14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till 2)

  1.

  Your limbs buried

  in northern muscle carry

  their own heartbeat

  2.

  Mississippi . . .

  alert with

  conjugated pain

  3.

  young Chicago

  stutterer whistling

  more than flesh

  4.

  your pores

  wild stars embracing

  southern eyes

  5.

  footprints blooming

  in the night remember

  your blood

  6.

  in this southern

  classroom summer settles

  into winter

  7.

  i hear your

  pulse swallowing

  neglected light

  8.

  your limbs

  fly off the ground

  little birds . . .

  9.

  we taste the

  blood ritual of

 
southern hands

  10.

  blue midnite

  breaths sailing on

  smiling tongues

  11.

  say no words

  time is collapsing

  in the woods

  12.

  a mother’s eyes

  remembering a cradle

  pray out loud

  13.

  walking in Mississippi

  i hold the stars

  between my teeth

  14.

  your death

  a blues, i could not

  drink away.

  10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals 3)

  1.

  Philadelphia roots

  lighting these walls

  with fireflies

  2.

  flowers stretched

  in prayer on a

  cornerstone wall

  3.

  brownskinned

  children dancing

  with butterflies

  4.

  these children’s

  faces humiliate

  the stars

  5.

  Philadelphia

  painted with

  blue hallelujahs

  6.

  winter

  a warrior’s face

  i hear our bones singing

  7.

  in the open

  alley a galaxy

  of dreams

  8.

  common ground

  is we, forever

  breathing this earth

  9.

  hands

  in the green light

  saluting peace

  10.

  even in the

  rain, these murals

  pause with rainbows.

  4 haiku (for Nubia 4)

  1.

  Telephone wires sang

  her voice over

  soft sister laughter

  2.

  you held us

  with summer stained

  smiles of hope

  3.

  i hold your

  breath today . . . you sail home

  across the ocean

  4.

  i see you Nubia

  walking your Mississippi walk

  God in your hands.

  21 haiku (for Odetta 5)

  1.

  The sound of

  your voice thundering out

  of the earth

  2.

  a drum

  beat summoning us

  to prayer

  3.

  behold

  the smell of

  your breathing

  4.

  dilated

  by politics

  you dared to love

  5.

  you opened

  up your throat

  to travellers

  6.

  exhaled

  Lead Belly on Saturday

  nites and Sunday mornings

  7.

  your music asked:

  has your song a father

  or a mother?

  8.

  on stage

  you were a

  soldier of hands

  9.

  accenting

  beat after beat

  into beauty

  10.

  you asked: is there

  no song that will

  bring rain to this desert?

  11.

  you unveiled

  your voice at early

  demonstrations

  12.

  saluted our

  blood until we were

  no longer strangers

  13.

  waltzed our

  eyes until we danced

  from chandeliers

  14.

  your songs journeyed

  in a country padlocked

  with greed

  15.

  a country

  still playing on

  adolescent knees

  16.

  suddenly the morning

  takes you back another

  time another continent

  17.

  where stones

  contacted stars told

  us hello and goodbye

  18.

  finally we remember

  how you gave life

  to memory

  19.

  remember your eyes

  morning stars

  perfumed with rain

  20.

  your mouth

  a sweet wind

  painted with hieroglyphics

  21.

  finally to pass

  your song into our

  ancestral rivers.

  3 haiku

  1.

  (for Richard Long 6)

  Elegant ascot

  man turning words

  into gems.

  2.

  (for Tanabata festival 7)

  star filled poem

  shall I hang you

  on pine trees?

  3.

  (for Luisa Moreno 8)

  Free brown woman

  sailing white river currents

  without a mortgaged soul.

  4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond 9)

  1.

  Blue atom

  poet transcribing

  our flesh

  2.

  your quicksilver

  words waterfalling in

  sweet confession

  3.

  you have taken down

  the morning turned it into

  a roar of blackness

  4.

  your poems . . .

  butterflies fluttering down

  to earth.

  7 haiku (for Ray Brown 10)

  1.

  African bass

  translating our

  beauty

  2.

  hammering

  nails into the

  off . . . beat . . .

  3.

  walking

  our eyes on

  water

  4.

  hands

  violining us into

  blue black waves

  5.

  ding ding ding (click)

  dong dong dong dong dong (click)

  dee boom (click) deeeboooom (click)

  deeeee booooom (click)

  6.

  bass

  transcending

  old memory

  7.

  your sound

  sweet perfume

  on my thighs.

  6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney 11)

  1.

  (“L’oiseau Charlie Parker”)

  I

  An avalanche

  of reds and pinks exploding

  into jazz

  II

  this yardbird

  wears ostrich feathers

  no boundaries.

  2.

  (Untitled Watercolor)

  Ragman

  in Paris wearing

  Harlem eyes.

  3.

  (Untitled)

  How to dance

  in blood and

  remain sane?

  4.

  (“Lithograph Afrique”)

  Pink and green and

  grey figures leap off the ship

  bones line the clouds.

  5.

  (“Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald”)

  Nose. mouth. eyes.

  green. orange.

  yellow voice spinning . . .

  6.

  (“Self-portrait”)

  I

  One eye larger

  than the other swimming

  in the Seine

  II

  green-brown face

  African neck brace, European

  collar on pink body.

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  4 haiku (for Max Roach 13)

  1.

  i need to

  catch your brain

  and steady it

  2.

  let’s impeach

  this yellow detour

  of your memory

  3.

  how dare

  your sweet hands

  forget you!

  4.

  i kiss the

  surprise always in

  your eyes.