Guest Post by My Brother John

I posted this poem before, but John has prepared this page with the original photo that inspired it all those years ago. "A good post bears repeating."

 

Vernal Epiphany: Guest Poet John Babel

Vernal Epiphany

Its alchemical prestige

Still staggers almost –

Drawing drought’s dried dregs –

It’s detritus and dross,

And by the grey grace of rain

Grasps all the grand and the gross,

And death’s dumb dirge defeated

Made verge vibrant, verbose.

 

River bottom’s ablaze! All butter

And sun,

The hills are a maze of gingham

Waves run

Round pools of coral and bays of

Cerulean

And islands of blush seashell

Swollen and stung.

 

Hidden among the spumes

Of ice mist

Bundles of cattle

Newborn take their rest –

The scissortail sails singing

Over the frost clover crest

And ministering bees

Bless and are blessed.

 

Its alchemical prestige

Works covert, complete:

Draws drained spirit

From death and defeat –

And with poetic precision

Reveals reality raw and replete

With rebirth and renewal –

Crystal, 

Concrete.

 

- John Babel, 4/17/15

What did I tell you? Singing birds. Best poet since Gerard Manley Hopkins, in my opinion. I might be partial. A bit of spring hope in winter.

Friday Fiction: Guest Star Poet

 SISTERS

 

Sisters,

You stand together for the last time,

Long life strewn through tough old arms,

Firmness of years pinned up tight in a bun.

Flowered hats you wear,

Long dresses, Sunday clothes,

This is a special occasion.

In your eyes there lie

Reflections of time, fires and rivers,

Smiles, tears,

The births of babies, deaths,

Family, friends, land.

You always had each other’s hand

To hold and see you through.

Those old eyes

Filled graves and kissed babes,

Laughed at marriages

And cried to see the children leave,

And to see time weave its hands through all.

Warm now like sunlight on your faces it glows,

Proud, wise, loving.

You stand now, facing the sun,

Stillness of time like a lazy river

Froze for a moment,

Allowing you to take hands again

For the last time all three:

The laughing girls who

Helped Mama put up pickles

And Daddy pick cotton.

Standing together,

Staring in silence,

The warmth of togetherness,

The smell of fresh best clothes,

The knowledge of the end;

Time's an old friend,

And to meet it,

Like life,

You do it together.

Looking over the distant hills you plainly see

The haziness of infinity.

 

--John Babel, 1983

Even when he was 17, I always thought (and still think) that John is a better poet than me. Perhaps it's his familiariy with song lyrics that allows him to weave such words together. He found an old batch of photographs at Yesterday's Warehouse back in the day, ancient and eccentric family pictures of a vanished time and a forgotten  family. Some of them went on to illustrate the Arena, the school magazine, that year. One was of three elderly sisters dressed in black Sunday best, who looked like rural Victorian Norns. These photos I found online only vaguely appoximate it. Anyway, that photo helped inspired this poem.

Johnny on the Spot

Today I’d like to talk about my younger brother John, whose birthday is this month. He is definitely my best friend and greatest ally, the sharer of my earliest memories, my closest confidant and the person who most understands me with the least judgement and the greatest charity. I hope I pass away before he does, because a world without him would be bleak indeed.

I suppose his greatest attribute is his joy and humor, all the better because it is tempered with a sense of how fragile and precious such things are in a cold cruel world, where there is so much mockery to be made of the ironies and inconsistencies life. His wit has a way of piercing any pretension or self-pity and restoring good humor to what may seem to be a grim situation.

This humor manifested itself in his earliest years; I know he was drawing comics from the 2^nd grade on, and maybe even earlier. This skill further honed his story-telling ability, where he was always clever in introducing amusing and interesting twist complications, a talent much-prized in our childhood ‘playings’ and which prevented them from devolving into mere egotistical ramblings, sometimes blossoming them into full-blown ‘epics’.

Besides being an excellent co-conspirator and enthusiastic appreciator of others ‘discoveries’ (our family seldom comes across an interest that they do not want to share with ‘the collective’), John has made several areas his own: especially comics (graphic art), and I might cite comedians in general, especially of the Golden Age, like Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. He was the original ‘monster kid’ par excellence in our family, with horror from Frankenstein to Fangoria being his special preserve. He is the greatest Beatles enthusiast among us, and his musical taste and findings have allowed me to branch out (in my own stunted way) into areas I would not have on my own. His appreciation for literature, from the science fantasy of Ray Bradbury to, say, the classic fiction of Leo Tolstoy, is wide-ranging and eclectic. He has a special sense of the comedy in horror and the horror in comedy, and feels the sorrowful tragedy that underlies it all without it letting it overwhelm him.

And beyond mere enthusiasms are his uncommon common heroics, his decency, and his kindness. Of us three older Babel boys, he is the one who managed (by greatest good fortune) to discover a wonderful wife, found a family, and shape a home. He labors diligently to provide for them all. He has helped support me through my darkest times. I have sometimes thought (in my vanity) that he is the Sam Gamgee to my Frodo Baggins. But let us not forget that Sam is the real hero of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo wouldn’t have gotten very far without Sam. Nor I without John.

Of us all, he has written some of the best poetry. He has appeared in several guises throughout much of my writing. He is the only reason I ever finished writing a novel, and why I have written as many short stories as I have. He is my ideal target audience, and he gets my meaning, sir.

I hope he will pardon me this all too brief summation of his life, and its emphasis on what it means to me, particularly. Volumes could be written on his meaning and impact on all who have known him. In fact, I know he will forgive me. He recognizes that, as with most of the characters in our family, one cannot easily summarize a biography in a few short paragraphs. But I have to say something, to give at least an impressionistic portrait of my brother and friend. And so to wish him a very happy birthday, and many more to come.