This is another From Friday poem (A Life in Thrown Paint, and On the Highest Edge of Strings) that was slower in coming than the previous. I feel the first stanza is agonizing, but I've been blind as to what to do so I decided to release it to you guys and perhaps you'll free up my brainlock.
Fluency
"La foi." -Mozart Bastien, 58, said in French. After some work, he and his translator came up with the word he meant in English. "Faith."
—New York, NY
He went to sleep. He woke.
A stroke had stilled Mozart Bastien's tongue.
For three years silent,
the uncarved stone of words
lay unmoved in his mind.
A pastor in his former land,
often called to pray for ailing men,
now fired from his factory job,
he laid in bed, "I still have faith in God."
he said by speaking with his hands.
He prayed for fluency to return,
silence a gravestone in his mouth.
He prayed for work, for meaning aside from money.
And when his tongue was remade flesh
he went down on hands and knees and cried,
"This is liberte'."
From the article "The Neediest Cases; After a Stroke, a Torturous Battle to Put Thoughts Into Words, and to Work Again" by Monica Potts published in the New York Times December 16, 2005.
Contributors
Blog Archive
1 comments:
rems,
really like this one, though i see what you mean about the first part. i think, if the quote at the beginning can be joined to the first stanza, or at least set up as a stanza of its own (not a byline), you could then cut "Bastien" from the second line (the conflation of meaning with Mozart the composer could be cool: or confusing, i don't know).
anyway, that's my first impression.
the other thing is, i'm not sure why you ended it with "this is liberte'" : first thing that sprang to mind was "you will respec my authorita".
more (and hopefully usefull) comments when i get another free minute...
Post a Comment