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PROPHECY'S LULLABY

The night is dotted with constellations crowned with a band of light, whose galactic center produces the milk of time. When shall we drink, children?

We shall drink when the seal is broken, the princess wilts and the bullseye closes.  We shall drink when the tears from the eyes of the girls in raincoats form unsullied streams, and their brothers lead us to the baptismal waters.  

The clay of the earth will be ours and there will be nothing we cannot image and therefore accomplish. We will build a miniature city from the palace of memory, yet not a temple to house our covenant. We are our own house, the living architecture.  

We shall send up a fleet of kites, scrawled with the words of the day. Kites of bleached muslin stretched over glowing cross-sticks, dressed with flowing tails.  

They will be seen drifting above the clouds, all our blameless, childish hopes.

Stalking the target, our bows indestructible, we draw and release.  The Sun shall have the fleece and the flesh shall fall away.  the secrets of the Minotaur, the grail of Parsifal and the bones of saints shall be purified, committed to the elements.

And these thing we saw written on the immense screen once known as sky. And these things we heard as prophecy's lullaby. the mountain is the mountain. The Lord is the Lord. the holy city belongs to none. the Mountains of Judah belong to none. The yielding seed belong to none. and we are the new Jerusalem.

These things are written on the wind...

© Patti Smith

Photo : Lynn Davis, "Evening / Northumberland Strait III", 1993

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THE SWORD OF GOD

I saw the sword of God plunge into the heart of the walled city I felt the blood pumping the ancient chambers life squeezed from the women with breasts like ripe fruit their juice streaming the stone steps into the hills I walked the blood roads and I saw the sword of God tempered into flesh and this flesh was the son of man who rose pierced in the side a fate no more harrowing then that of the women save what was offered the ransomed hope of the world and I saw the men on horseback stout white horses with painted snouts swift blacks with saddles of hammered silver that raced through time I saw the sword of God welded by a firm hand his arms raised skyward and the blood poured from his wrists like wine and the people cried hosanna and drank until they could drink no more and the juice spilled from their mouths and over the lips of their jugs onto the ground and sank into the earth and I saw vines push their way up from the earth wrapping the necks of the stiff and the corrupt and I saw fish fall from the sky and rain upon the land and children with baskets woven by the women gathered them and served them to the old men and the young soldiers and they were not soldiers of battle they served the son of man and they had neither script nor sword but the sword of God hung over them the sword was a cup wrought by spirits and the cup was nothing in the hands of another and fools drenched their hems and gave their lives holy for it wrenched themselves from their play and lay before the wheel that pierced them in such places that the thorn would be ashamed and the bees and the werewolf’s drank of their blood that flowed like a river I saw the sword of God unfold like a sail and set out for lands that had no name and the exiled followed and they were delivered and they bore no arms nor did they strike one another nor were they consumed with greed nor did they trample their fathers nor did they sell what must not be sold nor did they form a calf of gold and that which was corrupt was frozen and veiled and did return to dust and I walked these same blood roads where bits of seeded cloud manna of angels fell into the hands and upon the rack and scattered through the fields and songbirds took up the seeds and the word was reborn and we rejoined with great joy and the sword of God hung above us and shattered yet a liquid retained its form and we were afraid yet drank as we were bid

A Pythagorean Traveler with Sword, Buenos Aires, 2006 Photo by Patti Smith

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HERMANN HESSE

HERMAN HESSE July 2, 1877 — August 9, 1962

We who have tramped the country of the mind, enduring the harsh and demanding landscape as we journey to the east, trust Herman Hesse as our guide. We see him a step ahead, dressed in warm immaculate linen, bent, yet nimble, scaling uncharted precipices leaving signs, words etched into stone, that quench yet trouble the soul. You are not alone. You are ultimately alone.

High in the mountains above the bright lake, the ideals of brotherhood and the necessity of solitude snake. We dine on petals strewn on this parallel course. It is the course set by Hesse. It is treacherous and divine, and exists in his work and in the landscape of his life - Montagnola, where he wrote "Siddhartha", "Klingsor's Last Summer," and "Magister Ludi." He received the Nobel prize for the latter in 1946. It was his last great work. The typewriter on which he wrote still sits in the light, flooding the room where he worked. The keys diffuse like the glass beads of Joseph Knecht, which the acolyte grasps and plays, like a rosary.

In his lifetime, the people of Montagnola celebrated his birth, as do we, for he has given us a gift to last through human history: the glass bead game, a system of knowledge that is no system at all, save in our unfolding imagination.

--Patti Smith

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© Patti Smith

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Babelfield  © Patti Smith

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© Patti Smith

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© Patti Smith

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The Wait For You

every night I wait hard for you like a hard mistress like somebody’s outlaw woman never sure from which side she’s sitting just a ragged queen with a bullet carved on the inside of her wrist I’m shot to hell I’ve been up all night It’s insane to wait, but I insist one kiss from you is worth it, shotgun to pass the time I dress up like a red-mouthed Italian starlet like a Times Square tap dancer like a flash, hot in the hoochie koo or the girl dressed in gingham every night I steer away from other tricks and plenty of good men men with hot chestnuts steer away from them like the great navigator nursing a romance with the great bear disregarding all the fine points of the sky’s compass and drunk drunk on the hours behind on the lone night ahead so I’m drunk enough and willing if you come so I’m drunk enough to take it if you don’t come rum and another one and a round all around me so I don’t have to stretch for one lest my wrist shake and break the drinker’s glass lest my wrist show it’s not working revealing I’ve been chosen to be somebody’s outlaw woman beat to shit like a sea wretch despite the mark of the sovereign cut in my palm

© Patti Smith

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TRUE MUSIC

Time is expressed in the heart of an instrument Something that stops in the heart of a man Time is the wall and the space around Time is the tree a life that resounds Time to adore and time to go To give to the fisherman the slippers of Rome the whirling embrace the arms of the fold to gather together the swirl of the leaves turning and falling returning as thee to the clay of creation tho' your children will hold the wave of your hand the smile of your soul 

© Patti Smith

 God’s hand, Rome, 2007 © Patti Smith

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THREE WINDOWS

In the garden of the fugitive he knelt singing I am with thee

In his white cassock he cried I pray for that brother who shot me

A black crucifix appeared as he lay dying forgive me

I am one

Crepe streamed from three windows a flag dropped bound in mourning these words entered the heart

You have come the door is open you will not find me you will find my love

Copyright Patti Smith

[pattismithpoet]

twin death

9.11 awoke to the sound of a passenger plane singing its end. awoke to the sensation of spirits - a purgatory of souls ascending the billowing smoke and ash filling the sky at the base of my street.

they are gone. the twin posts that anchored our city. an hour before waved goodbye to my daughter heading for school. i sat on my stoop gazing at them sleepily, disinterested, then returned to my slumber, in the arms of my love.

9.12 awoke to the sound of f-15's and helicopters circling above, drawing me from bed into the street. the towers are gone and the skin of our sky is wounded.

they are gone. what form of intelligence has committed this deed? what portrait could i paint? what lines might i draw? from what human memory can i draw from? i can no longer picture them. on my wall are sheets of drawings, abstracting the cross and the motion of resurrection. remove them and set them away, taping up fresh sheets, returning to the street to think.

yellow streamers snake through the streets, wrapping my ankles. as i reach to free myself, i notice the light if different. they way it falls on the buildings and on the back of my hand. momentarily inspired, i pocket some streamers and head back.

taping the yellow strip across the white sheets of paper, i find i am unable to draw one line. it should be so simple, child's play to trace their dual silhouette. but i can't. i'm afraid that i won't do it right. i'm afraid that art is useless.

they are gone. and all those people. i keep sitting on my stoop looking towards the right, to where they were, thinking they will reappear. a dazed businessman impeccably dressed, save for the white dust covering his shoes, passes. he doesn't seem to know where he is going, but his shoes tell where he has been. i think of picasso and how he reacted to the bombing of guernica. how he translated his pain and horror into a monumental work that moves and teaches us to this day. i return to my wall.

if you look at the dust, one can see towers where there are no towers. like the amputee feeling the pain of phantom limbs.

i never really liked them. i protested their construction. i was empire loyal, resenting anything that might eclipse her. but through the years, i not only accepted, but also came to love them. it seemed wonderful because there were two.

9.13 awoke to the cries of "usa! usa!" nationalism is brewing. flags are flying. the sight of them fills me with conflict, for ours is a global concern. we are on human time. we are new york. a thoroughly human city. diversity is our pride. humanity is our duty - to offer one's hand, one's bread, one's prayer, and one's human love, with no distinction of faith, party, or nationality.

dawn has yet to break and i awoke to sirens and thunder and the rain against the skylight. volunteers' voices carry through the stage set of our streets. driven to be among them, i rise, dress quickly, gather up my required identification and enter into another world.

lines of emergency vehicles are exiting, moving south. irrationally attached to our checkpoint, now unmanned, i touch the discarded barricade, draped in rain-soaked steamers. the same yellow streamers that stretch across the white sheets adorning my wall. a face mask hangs on the edge of a long sawhorse that has restricted our street. the still life of the hour. lights cease flashing. the rain dissipates. houston street re-opens. the citizens reclaim sixth avenue.

only blocks away, workers mobilize, rescuers continue through the night. men cry out not to other men. i know nothing of the pain of their labors, what their eyes have seen, what their hands have clawed through. jean genet would have known how to glorify those callused hands. cannot even offer to shake them. i feel conspicuously invisible, dressed so poorly in the pre-dawn of national mourning. when the sun rises i shall dress in white, with respect for the ash veiling our city. the ash of our cremated towers.

9.14 a day of national mourning it is a morning for mourning. we, the people of the city, awaken to the rain. the god of abraham is weeping. allah is weeping. the feet of jesus, and mohammed are wet with tears and the people bow and grasp the damp earth.

a day of mourning, and for what shall we mourn? the humanity and the humanity invested in its architecture? the fate of the innocent afghan peoples? shall we mourn our inability as a people to communicate?

we are still the children of babel. speaking in divided tongues, unable to comprehend one another. the cries amongst the rubble of that colossal wreck are our own. babel's tower possessed the collective imagination of man. but they unlawfully penetrated the dreams of god. their ability to communicate was confounded to punish them for a lack of humility. perhaps when we humble ourselves as a people, will we communicate again.

9.15 once, in another century, i penned with arrogance, "i am an american artist, and i have no guilt." now i feel compelled to utter, "i am an american artist, and i feel guilty about everything." in spite of this i will not turn away: i will keep working. this i perceive as duty. as i pray to god that in days to come, i will not awake and rise with the blood of the afghan people dripping from my american hands.

9.16 may we ask for wisdom and, in possessing it, the moral courage to exercise it. may we ask to be emptied of hate so to attain harmony. may we strive to comprehend one another.

9.17 for the first time since the attack, i enter a subway. i go as far as broadway & nassau and a walk to liberty street. i have my first view of ground zero. i come here with some reservation, as i do not wish to trespass. but i want some answer to a question vaguely formed. like a child i want to see them, or what is left of them, and say goodbye. i also believe they will tell me something of why i care for them so much, why i miss them, and how they should be remembered. in this pursuit i am ranted this vision: from liberty street i see their skeletal remains, resembling brueghel's portrait of babel. atop them two twisted fingers reach heavenward in the perfect shape of a v. the simple sign for peace.

we return to work. our mayor has wisely counseled us to engage in our daily human tasks. i know now why i mourn our towers. because they were young, and symbolized the optimistic strength of our young nation. my wall has twin sheets of paper. there is no image. i have decided that is my portrait. not what we see, but what we don't see and will never see again. two pure white sheets empty as the sky to the right of my stoop at the base of my street.

Copyright Patti Smith

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from M train

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