Maelstrom: One Drop Makes the Whole World Kin

Anne Waldman

All the world is one, like an angry deity’s essence dropped in the ocean
becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris
What happens Vicenza U.S. Base or Prodi, Kyoto Accord, XL Pipeline
advanced warplanes to Japan—what happens? Egypt, Yemen, Syria
NASA’s five space probes or Aurora Borealis where we study shimmering light
What happens on the Lunar New Year
I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial moves?
A lexicon & vibration touch the complexity of gestural motion
What happened with Augustine & his mother in Ostia?
I want to know what happens Nicea 325 perhaps God creates the world!
Let’s go back and check this out: Ex nihilio ardore/splendore
Europe still riding the pull of Zeus a nuclear reactor not dismantled
Heads coming off in cruelest acts, unspeakable
And how that is part of your story too—flooding in Mozambique,
in Morocco, in Indonesia a part of you all suffering a part of you
What happens Rwanda, Darfur, Chad, Ukraine, glaciers shrinking what happens
when carbon-capped bombs fall on Natanz? on Bushehr
What is the poet’s job out of numbed slumber?
Entering post-poet-modernity I gave my larynx a workout
Started chanting for the redemption of Irreparable
Om Ah Hum for the Year of the Shy but Cunning Metal Rabbit,
Inshallah O Peace Brutal Year of the Wooden Horse
The Gentle Sheep Year O Help us Now, Shalom Ah Hum, Shanti

About This Poem

“This poem is a prayer or incantation for understanding the vicissitudes of the world’s perpetual (and more and more man-made), inflected chaos. The repeated question: ‘what happens?’ is perhaps a useless query. There is no stopping ‘what happens.’ All the poet can do is sound her complaint and awareness, naming trouble spots, calling on religious mantras to further sound the alarm. Praying for a more salutary New Year that will wake the world to itself.”
—Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman is the author of over forty books of poetry, including Gossamurmur (Penguin Books, 2013). She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the artistic director of the Jack Kerouac School’s Summer Writing Program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Photo credit: Matt Valentine

Most Recent Book by Waldman

Gossamurmur

(Penguin Books, 2013)

"blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton

"Recession" by Sydney Lea

"Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Read This Poem

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April 16, 2015