“What a Poem Cannot Do” by Aliyah Cotton (U.S.)

 

抄寫及攝影：崔雨晴 聯計金四 大學圖書館進學園

“What a Poem Cannot Do” by Aliyah Cotton (U.S.)

 

Is prepare a lynching. It cannot intercept the man,

        woman, or child as they make their way home.

    It cannot drag them from that home,

heels in the dirt, body contorting with fear. It cannot

        find a rope corded and coarse enough

to hold the knot, to hold the weight.

    A heavy rope.

 

It cannot find the rope to make the noose,

    nor find a tree with branches high enough,

        thick enough. It cannot find a tree healthy enough

  to accommodate the sudden plummet of death.

It cannot be the mob, tossing the rope.

    Necklacing the rope. It cannot hoist the rope and keep it taut

while the body is fraught and then stiff

 

and then limp and sodden. It cannot be the fluid

    that runs down the leg of the body

  nor the bulging eyes, the slobber and the spittle.

It cannot be the mob watching the body, heavy as coal.

        Dangling like earrings. It cannot burn,

    blowtorch, and brand the bodies.

It cannot be the smiling and cheering of the mob.

 

        It cannot be a father, lifting his child up

onto his shoulders for a better view.

    It cannot be the flash of light and cough of the old camera.

        It cannot be the postcards later sold as keepsakes,

            nor the colorful carnival float,

decorated with streamers and balloons,

    that parades the body through town.

 

A poem cannot snatch Mary Turner in the night.

    It cannot feel the heat of her blood,

nor douse her clothes in gasoline.

    It cannot reach deep inside

and wrench the child from her.

    It cannot be the heel of a boot

that crushes eight months of life.

 

    It cannot tell her, Now you will never be

your mother, praying on your knees in the dirt.

    It cannot carry the body home in a sack

or decapitate the body with a firewood axe.

    It cannot drive a stake through the head and place the stake

into the ground on a well-traveled road. It cannot leave the head there

    until the sun or the birds or the vermin have their way.

 

——Poetry (2021)

 

（Complete version available on the Facebook Page of The Power of Words.）