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Summer 1983

World Order

A Season of Infamy in Iran

Editorial

Re-Centering: The Turning of the

Tide and Robert Hayden

Frederick Glaysher

“Grand Prix de la Poesie” for

Robert Hayden

Rosey Pool

A New Portfolio of Poems

Introduced and Selected by

William Stafford

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World Order

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 4 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

Consultant in Poetry:

WILLIAM STAFFORD

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. Application to Mail at Second-class postage rates is pending at Wilmette, IL. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included. Send manuscripts and other editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

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Copyright © 1984, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 A Season of Infamy in Iran

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 Re-Centering: The Turning of the Tide and

Robert Hayden

by Frederick Glaysher

19 “Grand Prix de la Poesie” for Robert Hayden

by Rosey Pool

25 A New Portfolio of Poems

Introduced and Selected

by William Stafford

46 Authors & Artists in This Issue

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A Season of Infamy in Iran

FOR IRAN the summer of 1983 has been a season of infamy. The world has watched in stunned disbelief as the mullahs continued their genocidal campaign against the Bahá’í community. They first hanged eight men in Shiraz, and later ten women, three of them teenagers.

The Revolutionary prosecutor, Siyyid Ḥusayn Músáví, defying truth and ordinary decency, announced the official banning of all Bahá’í institutions and proclaimed membership in them a criminal act. The charges were either specific and patently false—spying and sabotage—or abstract and ridiculous— warring against God.

Though the mullahs have always maintained that there was a mere handful of Bahá’ís in the Islamic Republic, the prosecutor now claimed that “there are many Bahá’ís in Iran. But some of these people are spies. . . .” Those who are not spies, the prosecutor said, will be free to practice their beliefs provided they do so privately, and provided they do not invite others to participate, do not spread the Faith, are not active, do not form Assemblies, do not give information to others, and do not cooperate with Bahá’í institutions. Those who consent to live in silence, to see their community die a slow death will be permitted to do so. This is the extent of the humanitarianism of Iran’s Shiite clergy.

Iranian Bahá’ís obedient to their religious commandment not to violate the law have disbanded all their institutions. There no longer exists an organized community. By a definition contained in a charter to which Iran is signatory, an act of genocide has been committed. Is this another step on the gruesome path toward the physical extermination of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children?

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

THE ARTS, almost from the moment WORLD ORDER began publication in 1966, have played an important part in the magazine. Armed with Bahá’u’lláh’s assertion that “‘Arts, crafts and sciences uplift the world of being, and are conducive to its exaltation,” the Editors deliberately pursued a policy that would balance the best of humanity’s creative thoughts expressed in words with those expressed in poetry, art and photography.

The result has been a succession of articles on various aspects of the arts (general and theoretical) and on such diverse artists, poets, and artisans as Robert Hayden, Walter Hatke, Mark Tobey, Mildred Mottahedeh, and Shinji Yamamoto. Reproductions of paintings, movie reviews (not as many as we would like), and photographs have also been an important part of our magazine.

Perhaps the art to which most attention has been given has been poetry. Certainly Robert Hayden, our poetry editor from 1968 through 1980, with his patient good humor, taught his colleagues to look upon poetry as a much more integral part of the magazine than space filler—a lesson we hope we have internalized. In 1971 Hayden took the magazine’s commitment to poetry a step further by proposing a periodic anthology of poetry to be introduced with his own comments on the state of poetry. The first anthology appeared in our Spring 1971 issue and a second one in Summer 1975. When Hayden died in 1980, he was collecting poems for a third anthology.

In this issue William Stafford, our current poetry editor, carries on the tradition. He has assembled poems from the well known and from the neophyte, a collection that we think coheres and makes a statement about the fears, hopes, and aspirations of humanity.

* * *

A HOUSEKEEPING note for our readers: As of 1 September 1983 all manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be sent to the WORLD ORDER Editorial Board, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

Three copies of manuscripts are required —the original ribbon copy and two legible carbon or machine copies. Manuscripts, whether typewritten or produced on a word processor, should be double spaced and have ample side, top, and bottom margins. Page numbers should appear in the upper right-hand corner. Footnotes should be numbered serially and should appear at the end of the article, not at the bottoms of pages. Please refer to previous issues of WORLD ORDER or to the MLA Handbook for footnote format.

Manuscripts produced on word processors should be printed out on a letter-quality printer. Pages should be separated, and side bands of perforated paper should be removed. Lines should not be justified.

Subscriptions and queries about subscriptions should continue to be sent to WORLD ORDER Subscriber Service, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

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To the Editor

TRILINGUAL BABY

I particularly enjoyed Jane Merrill Filstrup’s account “Bringing Up Baby Bilingual,” in the Winter 1982-83 issue, and admired her tenacity for following through on such a tremendous task. Several weeks after reading the article I received a letter from my brother living in Panama in which he described the linguistic progress of his daughter who has a Persian mother, with Persian grandparents living nearby. She is now 3½ years old and has successfully incorporated three languages —English, Persian, and Spanish—into her everyday speech.

About a year ago my brother (both English- and Spanish-speaking) was concerned that she seemed to ignore instructions in English, but responded to Persian and Spanish. Her mother spoke to her in Persian mixed with Spanish, even though her mother is fluent in English as well, and my brother generally spoke English. She obviously heard much Spanish around her as a result of living in Central America.

It has only been recently that she began differentiating between the three languages and now calmly translates Persian into English for her father, and translates English into Persian for her mother, speaking to each in their respective mother-tongues, just as Mrs. Filstrup described her twins as doing for each parent. If, as Professor Lambert discovered, “bilingual children are at an advantage in an aspect of creativity known as “‘flexible thinking,’” how much more advantageous is a trilingual upbringing!

REGINA M. BLUM

Highland Park, Illinois

MORE ABOUT KRISHNA

Concerning Mr. David M. Earl’s letter “About Krishna” in your Winter 1982-83 issue, I would like to make a few comments: 1) While much of what Mr. Earl says about our current knowledge of Krishna is true, namely, that there is a great deal of legendary and mythological material woven into his portrait, his conclusion that he was not a historical figure is . . . somewhat premature. Indeed, it is based on a very narrow conception of historicity, one whose premise holds that historical existence can only be postulated by reference to a certain type of symbol-set, that of historical narrative. Legend, myth, and epic are a priori excluded as sources of historical investigation. They are not seen as possible reflections of historical events and characters (although exaggerated) but as mere depictions of timeless ideals. Without entering into the complexities of a methodological argument I feel that this approach not only depicts a cultural bias, but it is often impotent as an explanatory tool. In this regard, one might wonder how “the inspiring and soul-stirring story of Krishna blossomed forth in Indian literature” without the benefit of a historical catalyst. This, of course, is not to say that religious legends always demand historical counterparts, but to deny such relationships out of hand because they belong to certain genres is to my mind clearly unacceptable. In fact, working down from this point of view Christ’s historicity could be denied. 2) Having begun from a questionable premise Mr. Earl then proceeds to claim that Shoghi Effendi held the same position. Again, I feel this approach to be problematic. In this vein, the fact that the Guardian cites the Gita rather than Krishna seems a . . . technicality, as to separate the two, at least in the Hindu context, is meaningless. It would be like quoting from the Qur’án while at the same time doubting the existence of Muḥammad, for contrary to what Mr. Earl infers, followers of Krishna do not see him as a mere “ideal.” If something is to be made of the fact that Shoghi Effendi cites the book in contrast to citing other Manifestations, would it not be more frugal to interpret this as the Guardian’s awareness of the difficulties involved in untangling the “historical” Krishna from the “mythological” [Page 6] Krishna rather than ruling his historical existence out of court? Moreover, one might ask why Shoghi Effendi would bother to use such a prophecy in the context of other “valid” historical eschatological claims if he did not feel that it was associated with a Manifestation of God? In addition to this, the facts that a) during her trips to India Rúḥíyyih Khánum freely referred to Krishna in the same context as Christ and Muḥammad (Amatu’l-Bahá Visits India, p. 105), and b) Dr. Esslemont’s Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era (which was greatly praised by Shoghi Effendi and translated into Urdu . . . [at] his urging) refers to Krishna as a Manifestation seem to indicate that Shoghi Effendi did not see Krishna as just (and here I emphasize just) “an allegory representing Absolute Truth.”

3) Mr. Earl points out that Krishna appears late in the development of Hinduism and, therefore, cannot be associated with its origins. While this is certainly true, I see no connection between this position and the possible existence of a historical Krishna. Perhaps popular Bahá’í literature in the West has identified Krishna as the “founder” of Hinduism, which he was not, but to conclude, therefore, that he is only an allegorical abstraction is a questionable jump in logic.

In conclusion I would like to point out that as a student of comparative religion I have no personal reason for arguing in favor of the “historical” Krishna. It could well be that there was no such “person” as Krishna. What I am opposed to is the cultural bias that assumes this is so from its own ground rules (often without applying those same ground rules to other religious figures) and then interprets the Bahá’í position in a similar light.

WILLIAM N. GARLINGTON

Calabasas, California

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Re-Centering: The Turning of the Tide and Robert Hayden

by FREDERICK GLAYSHER

Copyright © 1983 by Frederick Glaysher

I

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised. . . .

Eliot

THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC feature of our age is anomie. Whether one looks in the domain of society or of the individual, the lack of a normative standard is abundantly manifest. This is apparent in the work of Jacques Derrida, who asserts that an unparalleled “event” or “rupture” has occurred—specifically, the loss of the center. More tellingly, he says, “This affirmation then determines the non-center otherwise than as a loss of the center.” The non-center is “thought” or “discourse.” The center has not been lost because it never really existed; it was only a fallacious structuring principle. At last, mankind has passed beyond the dream of “full presence.” Such thinking, perhaps it should be called postnihilistic, is typical of a great deal of contemporary philosophy and critical theory and is shared, in some form or another, by many writers. In effect, many people conclude that humanism is dead and that it never had a legitimate philosophical base. And they do [Page 10] so with better logic, as Gerald Graff maintains, than did the New Critics and modernists who sought to preserve humanism as a necessary, “supreme fiction.”

The only solution to the predicament is an obvious one; but as in all ages that are indoctrinated with specious, epicyclical systems of thought, it is difficult to perceive because it is so deceptively simple. We are habituated to the aberrant and abstruse. We have confused the meaning of the word simple with simplistic. Anomie vitiates perception. Hence we are unable to recognize that we do not live in a Ptolemaic universe—that is to say, a solipsistic one. Rather, our psychic solar system, despite appearances and assertions to the contrary, is, and always was, and always will be, centered around the sun. The center has never been lost, merely our ability to perceive it.

The realization that a “rupture” has occurred in our relationship with the center is not restricted to our century. Derrida himself does not claim that such a realization is confined to our time or that the “rupture” began with a specific individual. Instead, he states it is the consequence of the “spirit of an age, our own” in the broadest sense. During the last century many people were aware that an anomalous change Was taking place. For example, Matthew Arnold, in his preface to Poems in 1853, wrote that “the calm . . . the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced.” Although Arnold himself was often tainted by what he deplored, he was still perceptive enough to recognize and lament the beginning of a new, virulent self-consciousness. In “Dover Beach” he considers the “rupture.” The speaker hears the sound of pebbles grating against the shore as they are tossed about by the waves and observes that

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

It is precisely the sea of faith that has disappeared from modern life. Its “Retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind” has culminated in the horrifying dehumanization of our century.

One outcome of the “rupture” has been that writers and scholars have redefined anomie as a virtue. Some of them elevate solipsism and absurdity into the great [Page 11] truths of existence. Wallace Stevens exemplifies this attitude to an extraordinary degree. For example, in his poem “Of Modern Poetry.” he writes:

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find; the scene was set; it repeated what

Was in the script.

Then the theatre was changed

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

This quotation is characteristic of much of modern literature. The dialogue of the mind with itself has not only commenced but has triumphed over and obliterated objective, historical reality. Literature’s raison d’étre has indeed become “something else.” T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden were virtually the only poets who pondered and lamented the significance of the “rupture”; all others, W. B. Yeats preeminently, sought substitutes, “What will suffice.” This strange phenomenon has worsened in so-called postmodern literature. It is unfortunate that writers fail to realize substitution is possible only for a relatively short time.

The belief that literature is the “supreme fiction,” however, is one beyond which, as has already been noted, some present-day writers claim to have gone. They discard humanism, and rightly so, as a fiction based solely on the mind’s propensity for security, the dream for “full presence.” It is fitting to cast off humanism because it was and is a mere parasite living upon the desiccated carcass of religion. The last two centuries have witnessed a devolution of man’s perception of life. First, the centrality of revealed religion, whether Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, was diminished by the secularizing influence of materialistic capitalism and communism. Next, humanism and several forms of aestheticism tried to salvage in one way or another (and the authors who attempted this are legion) the fundamentally humane values that have their highest validation only in religion. Finally, the dominant religion of modern civilization, materialism, has thoroughly repudiated the truth of life’s basic spiritual reality. There remains no real challenge to this new dogmatism. Vague, embattled nostalgia for love and morality is not enough; John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction boils down to little else. It is astounding that the loss of the center has often been misinterpreted as the great postmodern “breakthrough,” instead of the spiritual and intellectual failure that it is. Since the values of the so-called avant-garde have come to be identical with the values of today’s complacent society, the only solution to the predicament is a restoration of the center. For it is the center that historically has been the only effective challenge to such banality.

But how can the center be restored? Esoteric, individualistic systems and existentialism’s negating of any coherent world view invariably result in solipsism because there is no external authority behind the artists; there is no reality to their “visions.” Certainly, Yeats’ “communicators” cannot be taken seriously; even he [Page 12] did not believe in them. Reference to other men—system builders—as authorities can only go so far before deteriorating into futile and muddled “discourse.” The intellectual cannibalizing of structuralism and poststructuralism clearly demonstrates this point. Eliot perceived correctly the plight of modern literature and perhaps would have viewed postmodernism as simply more of the same:

When one man’s “view of life” is as good as another’s, all the more enterprising spirits will naturally evolve their own; and where there is no custom to determine what the task of literature is, every writer will determine for himself, and the more enterprising will range as far afield as possible.

Ultimately the center, “custom,” has been lost in literature because it has been lost in life. Therefore, we need to restore the center to life before it can be restored to literature.

But how can the center be restored? The religions, which professed a humane, spiritual conception of man, are antiquated. They are only regional; only relatively limited areas of the globe have ever found any one of them palatable, perhaps largely because they became bound with local mores. Moreover, they do not meet the requirements of the present age, and all have frequently become more of a hindrance to life in this century than a confirmation and enrichment of it. Surely, a man-made syncretic religion is not the way to restore the center—that is, to restore man’s belief in God, life, and himself. The patent answer to our question is that only God can restore the center; the truly remarkable fact is that He has.

II

The promised day is come. . . .

Bahá’u’lláh

WITHOUT DISCUSSING the history of the Bahá’í Faith, I shall briefly outline its major tenets. The central claim of the Bahá’í Faith can be found in the following passage by its Prophet-Founder, Bahá’u’lláh:

The Revelation which, from time immemorial, hath been acclaimed as the Purpose and Promise of all the Prophets of God, and the most cherished Desire of His Messengers, hath now, by virtue of the pervasive Will of the Almighty and at His irresistible bidding, been revealed unto men. The advent of such a Revelation hath been heralded in all the sacred Scriptures.

Note the assertion that the advent of His revelation has been foretold “in all the sacred [Page 13] Scriptures.” Whether in the Bible, the Qur’án, or the various writings of Buddhism and Hinduism, the prophecy of a future world teacher or prophet is an omnipresent theme. If the claims of Bahá’u’lláh are true, they have tremendous and unprecedented significance for mankind, for He professes to be not just another prophet in a long line of many but the One Who shall usher in a truly global civilization beyond the confines of nationalistic regionalism.

Bahá'u’lláh succinctly expresses His most important precept in the following sentence: “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” He asserts that past dispensations resulted in the successive establishment of the unity of the family, the tribe, the nation, and that through the power of His own Revelation mankind shall attain worldwide unity, universal and lasting peace, the time when swords shall be beaten into plowshares. Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause until his passing in 1957, expounded this central teaching:

Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind—the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá'u’lláh revolve—is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men. . . . It . . . stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence. It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced. It constitutes a challenge, at once bold and universal, to outworn shibboleths of national creeds. . . .

Our age is dominated so thoroughly by anomie, ennui, and cynicism that the claims of the Bahá’í Faith cannot avoid sounding preposterous. However, they sound much more sane and credible than the “supreme fictions” advanced by such writers as Nietzsche, Stevens, Camus, Derrida, and Yeats. Moreover, the urgent need today for the unity of mankind ought to be glaringly obvious to any openminded, thinking person.

What distinguishes the Bahá’í Faith from other religions is its association “with an institution adequate to embody its truth.” This institution, the Universal House of Justice, was given its authority by Bahá'u’lláh Himself before His death in 1892. No other prophet has so clearly stipulated the fundamental laws and administrative institutions of His faith. The members of the Universal House of Justice, first elected by Bahá’ís in 1963, represent numerous races and nationalities. In its structure the Universal House of Justice blends together the best features of all existing political systems yet contains none of their shortcomings. Shoghi Effendi elaborated upon the future of this world administration:

A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries . . . a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one [Page 14] common Revelation—such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving.

The dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh is worldwide in scope: it favors neither the Orient nor the Occident; and it contains many precepts that make sense only in a context larger than the nation, precepts that are indeed calling into being a globally minded civilization.

But it must be observed that the Bahá’í Faith does not claim to be a new religion. If it is to be correctly understood, what Bahá’u’lláh revealed must be given due recognition: “‘This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.’”

III

Within the rock the undiscovered suns

release their light.

Hayden

ROBERT HAYDEN wrote matchless poetry that has justly won international acclaim. Two of his poems in particular reveal how deeply aware he was, to invert Nietzsche, of the “tremendous event . . . [that] has not yet reached the ears of man.” The first of these poems, “The Night-Blooming Cereus,” is perhaps his most beautifully metaphoric treatment of the turning of the tide. The title itself tersely presents the basic image—the cereus cactus that opens its striking blossom only in the season of darkness:

And so for nights

we waited, hoping to see

the heavy bud

break into flower.

The description of the bud as “heavy,” pregnant with potential flower, creates a sense of anticipation. It is further described as packed with its miracle and swaying in the air, “as though impelled / by stirrings within itself.” Later in the poem the plant is again partially personified as possessing a “focused energy of will.”

The speaker then states something that may be the reaction of many modern observers:

It repelled as much

as it fascinated me

sometimes. . . .

After the speaker attributes to it grotesque, bestial qualities, he addresses someone he refers to as “dear,” undoubtedly a loved one:

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But you, my dear,

conceded less to the bizarre

than to the imminence

of bloom. Yet we agreed

we ought

to celebrate the blossom,

paint ourselves, dance

in honor of

archaic mysteries

when it appeared.

The implication is unmistakable that the speaker himself has been struck by the “bizarre” much more than his companion; she has been touched by the “imminence of bloom.” Yet they concur that they “ought to celebrate the blossom.” The references to dancing and the painting of themselves have a joyous, primitive connotation. This sense of primordial joy is centered in the fact that they are honoring “archaic mysteries,” mysteries that are being restored before their intellectual eyes. Their reaction is the only appropriate one:

We dropped

trivial tasks

and marvelling

beheld at last the achieved

flower.

While one recalls that the speaker is repelled as much as fascinated—“sometimes”— that time is now in the past.

The poem ends with the following stanzas:

Lunar presence,

foredoomed, already dying,

it charged the room

with plangency

older than human

cries, ancient as prayers

invoking Osiris, Krishna,

Tezcátlipóca.

We spoke

in whispers when

we spoke

at all . . .

“Foredoomed, already dying” emphasizes the cyclical nature of the flower and implies that it, too, shall become outworn since it is a “Lunar presence.” Yet the unequivocal suggestion is that the newly opened flower is the one worth celebrating, [Page 16] the one worthy of their “marvelling,” their primordial human awe and adoration.

The poem “and all the atoms cry aloud” is the last one in Hayden’s superb sequence of poems “Words in the Mourning Time.” This sequence irrefutably demonstrates that he was sensible of the madness and evil around him. In an interview Hayden once discussed these poems and specifically referred to the last one:

The final poem is the culmination, the climax of the sequence. For me, it contains the answers to the questions the preceding poems have stated or implied. If I seem to come to any conclusion about injustice, suffering, violence at all, it’s in . . . the last poem, written originally for a Bahá’í occasion. Bahá’u’lláh urged the absolute, inescapable necessity for human unity, the recognition of the fundamental oneness of mankind. He also prophesied that we’d go through sheer hell before we achieved anything like world unity—partly owing to our inability to love.

Hayden did not find in the Bahá’í Faith a vague utopian dream. He was deeply conscious, as the religion is, of human suffering and evil. Yet he believed that the only true theodicy for today was to be found in the Bahá’í dispensation. Even a cursory acquaintance with his poetry must leave us with this realization.

The Bahá’í writings frequently conceive of the new dispensation as releasing revitalizing spiritual energy. Often this energy is described as influencing the rocks, the dust, every atom of existence—hence the title of the poem, wherein all the atoms of creation proclaim the new dispensation. The words “cry aloud” in themselves connote a more emphatic attitude than can be found in “The Night-Blooming Cereus.” This same increased emphasis exists in the repeated line “I bear Him witness now.” The adverb “now” especially intensifies the line. The sentence may be an allusion to the Bahá’í prayer that begins “I bear Witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee.” This repeated assertion announces with uncommon certainty, as the entire poem does, the long-awaited turning of the tide.

The poem contains several other allusions to the Bahá’í writings. The words “shrill pen,” “wronged, exiled One,” “surgeon, architect / of our hope of peace”; the acclaiming by the “stones,” “seas,” and “stars”; the quotation “‘I was but a man / like others, asleep upon / My couch’” (from Bahá’u’lláh’s Most Holy Book, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas)—all have their origin, as do many subtleties in Hayden’s poetry, in Bahá’í scripture.

The tone of “and all the atoms cry aloud” is much more elevated than that of “The Night-Blooming Cereus” and is free of the somewhat veiled disclosure of that poem. The atmosphere of quiet awe has changed to urgent certainty. Awareness of the “imminence of bloom” pervades the poem. Furthermore, it firmly places Bahá’u’lláh in history: “renewal of / the covenant of timelessness with [Page 17] time.” Once again, the reality of the existence of the center has been restored for man. The closing triplet reads:

I bear Him witness now:

toward Him our history in its disastrous quest

for meaning is impelled.

The use of “impelled” is an outstanding example of Hayden’s choosing the perfect word. It forcibly asserts the speaker’s conviction that only the new rain can cause the wasteland to bloom once again; that only the turning of the tide can replenish the sea of faith and respiritualize and unite mankind; that only the new dispensation can decisively challenge bourgeois materialism. Life is fundamentally a spiritual phenomenon, and though man-made ideologies may be briefly substituted, they soon prove to be hollow and barren; by their very nature they increase anomie; they merely raise another stone image in the desert.

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“Grand Prix de la Poesie” for Robert Hayden

by ROSEY E. POOL

Dr. Pool’s account of how Robert Hayden’s A Ballad of Remembrance came to be entered in the competition of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1962, was provided by Marion Hofman to whom Dr. Pool gave these papers before her death. Portions of it will appear in John S. Hatcher’s forthcoming book on Robert Hayden to be published by George Ronald, From the Auroral Darkness: Continuity in the Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden.

THE WEST AFRICAN Republic of Senegal is as far as I know the only country whose Head of State is a poet of major importance. Ever since the country gained its independence in 1959, Senegal has been governed by President Leopold Sedar Senghor whose poetry ranks among the best of French contemporary literature. Moreover Senghor is one of the originators of the idea of “Negritude” or race-awareness which I see as the universal human acceptance of one’s specific qualities, the good along with the not so good, complete acceptance on every level one’s race included. In that way I who am not a Negro, undergo my “Negritude.”

It is not surprising that the First World Festival of Negro Arts therefore was held at Dakar, Senegal, and that Negro painters, art historians, sculptors, composers, musicians, actors and dancers, and especially writers from all over the world responded to President Senghor’s, Unesco’s and the Societe Africaine de Culture’s invitation to submit their work in competition for a number of awards to be given during the Festival.

I, a native and citizen of the Netherlands, since 1949 a resident of London, and in fact something like a “flying Dutchman” have for almost four decades been working on the subject of the poetry of the American Negro. For many years I have known Robert Hayden. For many years I knew he was a Bahá’í. I was not. I remember very vividly my first personal meeting with Bob Hayden. At Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he has been teaching English and creative writing for many years. I remember our first long conversation about an important poem he was trying to write about the Báb. No explanation was needed. I knew. I understood. I had known about the Faith since I visited Israel many years ago. I had not given in . . . made my declaration [of adherence to the Bahá’í Faith] not earlier than in May 1965, when I was a temporary visitor at Huntsville, Alabama. On that night Robert Hayden happened to be at Huntsville to attend a Negro writers conference at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College where I taught for that semester.

The First World Festival of Negro Arts was in preparation. I had no hope at all to get [sic] involved. Although my subject is the poetry of the [Page 20] Afro-American, I am not an American. 50 the American Committee for the Festival could not delegate me. Although I live in London, I am a Hollander. So, I thought, I had no right to claim [the] interest of the British Committee. A Dutch Committee for the Festival had not been set up. Suddenly, quite out of the blue, the British Committee invited me to sit as a member of the pre-selection jury for literary prizes for anglophone authors at the First World Festival of Negro Arts. That was 17th January 1966. I received a list of works submitted, learned that only works published between January 1962 and September 1965 could be entered, that twelve copies of each work should have reached the Festival Head Office in Paris . . . before 1st January 1966, that is seventeen days before I was invited to help pre-select the books entered for competition.

Two days later, Wednesday the 19th of January, Marion Hofman came to lunch with me. I told her about the pre-selection jury, showed her the list of books submitted and expressed my regret that Robert Hayden’s book of poetry A Ballad of Remembrance was not entered. Like a flash of lightning I realized we might still be able to do something about it. Hayden’s book was published in London by Paul Breman, a young independent publisher and incidentally a Hollander, like myself. A telephone call to Paul Breman. Another call to the British Committee for the Festival. An urgent letter to the Festival Office in Paris. An airmail parcel containing twelve copies of A Ballad of Remembrance was hurriedly posted. Robert Hayden’s book was accepted for competition. On February 2nd, 3rd and 4th the pre-selection jury sat in Paris. On February 24th, 25th and 26th we gathered in London. Africans from Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia, writers from the West Indies, Africanists, critics and librarians. Two dozen assorted professions, colors and nationalities. It was our task to sort the chaff from the corn. To suggest three titles in each category of literature (e.g., novel, poetry, essay, drama, reportage) in order to facilitate the work of the Grand Jury at Dakar. Robert Hayden’s book of poetry was one of the three selected in the pre-selection jury. Bahá’u’lláh Himself, a poet and Justice personified, was helping critics to recognize a great poet whose voice had hitherto sung too far away to be heard sufficiently.

On 5th March I went on a tour of Morocco with my best friend who is not (yet) a Bahá’í. We met many of our friends on the way, spent many evenings in their hospitable houses, broke bread with them after a day of fasting, rejoiced with them on the eve of Naw-Rúz. At all these occasions I read some poems from Robert Hayden’s A Ballad of Remembrance, told the good news that one of us was among the three finest poets of African descent from all over the world (the other two being Derek Walcott from S. Lucia and Christopher Okigbo from Nigeria), and asked for the friends’ help in the difficult task the Grand Jury was going to have. Do I need to add anything about my private conversations with our Great Beloved Poet?!

On the morning of Monday 21st March, the day of Naw-Rúz at Marrakech I received the news that I had been chosen to be one of the adjudicators of the Grand Jury at Dakar. Would I accept? And in that case would I withdraw my own book Beyond the Blues from competition in the essay [Page 21] category for which authors of all races could enter? I cabled: “Happy and honored to serve on Grand Jury. Withdraw my book.”

On 27th March I flew home to London. Unpacked, re-packed and went off to Dakar, Senegal, on the 30th to commence the most difficult work of selecting the best among many fine works of poetry.

With me, like a prayer, even before us on the table printed in a book of poetry were Robert Hayden’s thoughts singing out in pain, in joy, in recognition of love of all humanity; the voice of a true poet—background to all our discussions in the magnificent building of the Republic of Senegal’s National Assembly.

There were moments when I sensed that even “He, Who is man beatified and Godly mystery,” (from Hayden’s poem “In Light Half Nightmare and Half Vision”) was holding his breath. . . .

Eight judges argued their points: Langston Hughes, world-famous poet from the United States; Katherine Dunham, citizen of the U.S. and of Haiti, dancer, anthropologist, author; Davidson Nicoll, author and College President of Sierra Leone; Cyprian Ekwensi, of Nigeria’s Ministry of Information, also a writer of major importance; Gerald Moore, of Britain, professor at Makerere College, Kenya, author of many learned books on African writing; Abe Wale, professor of English at the University of Nsukka, Nigeria; Clifford Simmons, director of publications of the National Book League, London; and myself as a specialist in Afro-American and modern African poetry.

Of course adjudicators have their private preferences. Of course we had discussions. But also we all together and each of us were trained to recognize true poetic quality and craftsmanship. Of course . . . the Great Poet helped us to judge fairly and to open the eyes and ears of those who had not seen Hayden’s words, or heard his voice before.

In a last session of the joint English and French language juries our unanimous ballot fell. GRAND PRIX DE LA POESIE: ROBERT HAYDEN OF THE UNITED STATES FOR HIS BOOK “A BALLAD OF REMEMBRANCE,” PUBLISHED BY PAUL BREMAN OF LONDON, ENGLAND IN 1962.

Deep within me my happiness and gratitude mingled with feelings of warmth and personal attachment which translated themselves into the words of the “crowned poet”:

He watches in a borrowed garden,

prays. And sleepers toss upon

their armored beds,

Half-roused by golden knocking at

the doors of consciousness. Energies

like angels dance

Glorias of recognition.

Within the rock the undiscovered suns

release their light.

(from “Bahá’u’lláh In The Garden of Ridwan”)

[Page 22] A press release was written. It read:

First prize in the poetry section was awarded to Robert Hayden of the United States for his book, A Ballad of Remembrance. Robert Hayden, born 1913, professor of English at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, ranks on every level of the critical analysis of poetry among the finest of our anglophone contemporaries. A Ballad of Remembrance is the work of a remarkable craftsman, an outstanding singer of words, a striking thinker, a poete pur song. He gives glory and dignity to America through deep attachment to the past, present and future of his race. Africa is in his soul, the world at large in his mind and heart.

That evening, Thursday 7th April, Nuit de la Poesie, the President of the Festival, Poet Alioune Diop, in the presence of the President of the Republic [of] Senegal, Poet Leopold Sedar Senghor, proclaimed to the audience in Dakar’s Theatre Serrano, the wonderful news about the artistic recognition of our Brother Bahá’í Robert Hayden of Nashville, Tennessee. This I wanted to share with you.

In His Service.

ROSEY E. POOL, London

[Page 23]

[Page 24]

[Page 25]

A New Portfolio of Poems

THIS GATHRING of poems adds a third to the series Robert Hayden edited and introduced in the Spring 1971 and the Summer 1975 issues of WORLD ORDER. For each of those he wrote an introduction that noted circumstances and trends in current literature and commented on vision and order and on the variety that marks current poetry.

The Hayden portfolios, because of his range of interest and wide acquaintance, brought in work by widely known writers such as Radcliffe Squires, Nelson and Beth Bentley, Hollis Summers, Chad Walsh, and Lewis Turco. For the most part, this new collection is based on work submitted through regular channels and hence represents a good survey of the kind of poems in the regular flow of the office mail.

Much of that flow relates to topics and feelings that link to the general content of the magazine—that is, some readers are responding by means of poetry to the life and commitment reflected in WORLD ORDER. The poems are engaged. They are motivated by an urge to share ideas, feelings, beliefs. And these sharings get a ready and sympathetic reading in the office.

After that sympathetic reading there comes another set of considerations for poems selected and published: they must have that wider outreach that makes reading an activity, a literary experience. This portfolio accepts a flavor that relates to WORLD ORDER and combines that with the economy of expression and balance of presentation that distinguishes poetry.

We hope that readers will approve our ways—the welcoming of participation, the receptivity to engaged poetry, and at the same time the steady search for those expressions that combine such content with the felicity and surprise and vigor of the best in literary accomplishment.

—WILLIAM STAFFORD

[Page 26]

Listen

listen

this is serious

(the need to talk)

there are only days

and hours left

sliding from hands

the earth moves in circles

and the moon

the whole moon breaking

half-whole half

and still the hours

with night at hand

are you still

listening

—Elliot Abhau

A Good Dream

In a good dream I dreamed again;

I spoke the fall of a night rain;

I knew the warmth only a body can know.

Quiet in that place, I learned to love

The root’s reach, a wingless bird

Waiting for a wing.

In a good dream I moved with the slow.

I watched a seed surprise itself. My ears

Shook at the river’s low way.

All that was hard was forgiven,

All flesh rose to its knees.

In a good dream I feared nothing,

Not even myself. The wind lifted,

And I in it. I moved in a deer’s eye,

And felt welcome. A tree whispered, Step

Into my shape. Every sound is worth a life.

—Tom Andrews

[Page 27]

The Distance Most Disturbing

No doubt there are magnitudes to be found

Blossoming in the bright gardens of space.

But here am I

Uncommonly lost in my own backyard,

Pulling weeds and still wondering

How far is far,

How near is near.

The distance most disturbing

Is the gulf of God.

What letter, what punctuation

Crosses?

Over and over

I turn these seeds in my hand

Hoping to discern something legible—

An imprint that might inform—

An order, to spring cell doors.

No doubt there are black holes

Between the stars

Which siphon our higher math

Into some kind of matter-less whirlpool,

But here I am

Overlapped like a seed in a hill,

Wondering whether to sink

Or struggle—

In an ever-present.

—Lynn Ann Ascrizzi

[Page 28]

Up and Down

We don’t much notice what’s quiet with us,

only what changes. But if we change

we do notice what’s here, can even see

how far. A lizard told me this, changing

himself from high to low, low to high,

not very high, but high enough, for him.

If we change enough (and we will,

some day) we’ll notice everything,

he said: and I believed him.

—Dick Barnes

Psalm

There are trees behind trees

beyond forests,

leaves that dance always

to their gold turning.

The sun hides

inside a pine cone,

waits for the spring.

Each sunlit cove holds

the one bird that sings;

inside the bark of trees

one tongue that whispers:

there is only one tree.

—Therese Becker

[Page 29]

In Memory of Paul Haney, Hand of the Cause of God

Tall one, high one,

head above us, heart below:

it was almost as if we stood

beside a second shrine

there where he showed us Akka across the bay

and sweet gold domed the day.

He almost had to stoop to enter,

a giant boy in socks, out guide,

with a voice like apple pie

but distant, distant—strange.

One thought of Lincoln somehow,

of frontiers, of pioneers,

of faces carved in mountain rock.

What a tree he was!

A tree so deeply rooted

in rich American earth

that all nations

share his shade.

—Bret Breneman

Given Time
Women Who Suckle Babies Will Wean The World
Away From War

Women lately born

from the womb of home

bring a sense of family

to community, nation

and world

With a kind of

orderly rhythm they stretch

their wings

Slowly the pendulum swings

Long tides roll

taking away and bringing back

old ideas in new forms

—Joyce Anthony Caldwell

[Page 30]

Man Brushing a Woman’s Hair

All rests here

a tortoise brush calm

in his hand

brushing,

brushing down

her hair supple

with the gleam of oil

soft about his fingers

as he braids,

twining her hair long

in the slow light.

His hands

move with the assurance

of a simple act,

the silence

falling loose and full

as the hair spilling down

the span of her back.

-Daniel Calto

At Liberty

The wolves have had their ruthless way too long,

Too often bared their fangs and left their work

All bloody in our path. It is enough.

We do not need them battering our lives

With death, inflicting plagues of butchery

With every breath, and walking carelessly

Away to come stalking once again.

It is enough. The time has come. Our outrage

Beckons us to speak, for silence weighs

Too much. Justice must unloose its tongue,

The injury be redressed, though only one,

For justice cannot keep with compromise.

The beasts in men cannot remain unchained;

They hunt, and none escape them when they come.

—Druzelle Cederquist

[Page 31]

Seasons

Along the landscape dusted all in brown

The flame tree rises, heaped with crimson flowers,

Color bursting amid shy, green leaves

And loved the more for all that’s drab beside.

So every season brings its flowering tree

And none trespass upon the other’s time

Nor bark confusion by inconstancy,

But bring enjoyment as they are defined.

Then let us our own seasons learn to know,

Learn to name the gifts that flower therein—

To watch and find what each one will bestow

And graciously accept the time within,

Incline our hearts to hear while yet we may

The accents that will never come again.

—Druzelle Cederquist

Always later

Always later I ask forgiveness

and sometimes ask some passerby

to note the deep feeling in my face.

Always later I ask the wind

why hard snow never scores the soft

wood of Patty’s house, and why

the trees outside her porch do not

wrap their branches around each other

against the cold. Always too late

I reach for the person I was

and cry Forgive! Forgive! then

drive the interstate past the turn

where Paul and Lou still play

and sing the blues. Back then

I set my cheek into Patty’s neck,

she never pushes off. I say

I’m wearing clothes I took from

father’s closet (where is he now?),

We walk along to the schoolyard—

still time for Patty and me.

She merges herself into my side

as we walk up Finn Past the place

milk trucks line up to begin.

—Stephen Dunning

[Page 32]

From the Fire Comes the Steel

Glowing—

White hot,

Shaped by fire and hammer,

The steel is forged, strong and true.

A soul—

Fired in the heat of trials,

Hammered by worldly desire, and

Tempered through God’s mercy

Emerges renewed.

Glowing—

Aflame

With the fire of God’s love

The soul is forged, strong and true.

—Lee Anne Errington

Through a Tree at Night

Light shining through a tree

and breeze warm and gentle

full of luscious spring

rocking branches to conceal

again and again

the beautiful beam that is more

than we can know or comprehend.

And though it dissappears from sight

beyond the darkened leaves it burns.

—Frederick Glaysher

[Page 33]

Sampler

Cross three threads and no more.

The needle flashes in the firelight;

my eyes burn over the stitching

as perfect crosses x my way

along straight lines of warp and woof

in A B C 1 2 3.

Stitch by stitch the needle pricks

my index finger, cultivates

a rough garden of white petals

growing in pink earth.

There are two windows

in the blue embroidery

If I might enter that house,

my eyes brown crosses and my hair

spiky stitches around my face,

I could lie flat against the linen

and look out from those blank windows.

But I am nearly twelve years old.

Soon I will sign my work,

Elizabeth Jane, A.D. 1837.

Soon a man will take me to his house

because my neck is graceful

over my embroidery frame.

—Anne Hutchinson

[Page 34]

Okomotos’

We must go

each of us alone, or all together

in one big Hiroshima bang,

like bushel baskets of Royal Annes

toppling off the ladder shelf,

cherries flying every which way,

our flesh already torn apart by birds,

or wormed open, or simply

pulled apart by the force of the blast.

Mrs. Okomoto, Mr. Okomoto,

you lost sons in the war,

do you dream about them?

I am that child who watches

while you dream, making change,

a finger for a toe, an arm, a leg.

You pack my mother’s groceries

neatly in the cardboard box,

lettuces, strawberries,

& dahlias. 30 years later

you cut the stems a second time

to freshen the flowers,

wrapping them carefully for me

in greengrocer’s paper.

—Diane L. Jolly

[Page 35]

Why in the Sun-Tongued Hills

Why in the sun-tongued hills are lambs grown heavy?

classed and sorted for the city’s slaughtering floor.

What sky in the green and gorsed autumn can endure

but hourly changes as the clouds sweep their tides around.

It is the month of fast, and fickle winds

are one day west and one day gone

and one day wet upon the glass apples, bowing

to the great god under the grasses.

It is the month of fast, and at the rising of the sun

and the going down of the same, I do remember them,

the pleasures only partly put away, like old soldiers

but brighter in memory,

(apple and cinnamon pancakes, with honey)

while all the land’s adorned and ordered,

readied for the winter.

It is the month of fast, and on the lawn

button mushrooms push their domed heads,

potent as birthing, through the fallen leaves

and into the upside world.

It is the month of fast,

the light is green and happy in my ribs,

I grow as thin as apple leaves.

The cloud folds back,

the wind leans gently,

the sun shines through.

—Sen McGlinn

[Page 36]

For the Bahá’í Martyrs

Last week in the public square

my father was not executed.

He doesn’t live in Shiraz.

He doesn’t bolt the door

each night, doubtfully,

after carefully looking out.

When mom goes to bridge group

each Thursday night

he doesn’t worry

she might not return

or that she will

to a masked terrorist in the garage

who will gag and rape her,

then drag her out on the lawn,

pour kerosene over her,

call out for the family,

the neighbors to watch.

This happens but not to my father.

He’s white American, a Lutheran,

who sells computers

and comes home for dinner.

—Kim J. Meilicke

Once Dead; Now Dying

and we laugh

and we cry

and we are together

while alone

and the wind

blows the tears from our faces.

and we age.

—Reinee Pasarow

© 1981, Reinee Pasarow

[Page 37]

Versal’s New Hip

i. The demonstration today

is how she’ll walk without pain,

miracle of medicine. How without malice

they slip through her skin, inserting their instruments,

checking the blood flow, temperature, measure leg length,

respirate her, fill her chart, trace her heartbeat.

Here, they do not notice the stories welling in her,

or detect the faint flutter of her right eyelid,

drooped since childhood.

Here, they design

the perfect hip, a bulb

of stainless steel that will fit as if made for her,

that will never age. Here, they do not leave open

questions on the system of her blood, or the fix of her skeleton.

They strive for equalization, close her, measure her response.

ii. This old one

smiles in her sleep;

it is her love for Charlie,

the summer of ’17,

moths steadied on the porch screen;

it is World War II, the happy ending,

when her and Charlie’s boys

came back alive; it is the smell of tulips,

gabardine, wet towels, stones in her garden, always

living near the river. The smile fades, Charlie’s gone.

But in her anesthetized state, she can do anything: resurrect him,

sit in her corner of the couch, read her Bible, ignore the thick plank

of smoke from his cigarette, underline favorite passages in ink,

scribble notes to her three girls in the margins

in the context of her own dying, a word of her own between miracles,

Jesus, and Charlie’s final breath.

—Rebecca Roberts

[Page 38]

Metempsychosis: Sunday Morning

Now it is April.

Snow on the trees is tentative

like soldiers.

Maybe I’ll recede into the sun

or part of me will,

blossoms orbiting.

Cold lunches at the window

kept me benumbed.

Now it is April,

and I’m my own angel,

soaring, dropping as the sun does.

—Cal E. Rollins

[Page 39]

Recollecting Jasmine

Since love has focused the heart of my days

They are decorated with details and truths

That shine more clearly than ever.

There are these of you:

The dim light

In the two rooms of your simple house

Where we were young together,

The cool floor smooth with dried dung,

The grass mats your family slept on

Rolled up neatly against the wall.

We sat on that floor

And ate your mother’s warm chapatis,

Then ran barefoot into sunlight

To gather flowers,

Make chains for our hair.

When I returned to visit,

Worlds and years had come between us

But our familiar words held,

And you took me back

To the bazaar to buy glass bangles,

Carefully choosing a lighter blue

For my fair arms

While yours, slender and brown,

Were flattered by deeper shades.

Now, women, and lives apart,

Even now I see your smooth round face

And black braids with ribbons,

Your dark eyes dancing.

Where are you?

What are the things that shape your days?

What do you know about love?

—Carolyn Servid

[Page 40]

Childish Things

When they light the candles a little propeller

turns the angels around and around.

They are of gold, of thin metal,

with a trumpet held in front of each mouth,

And a sound that comes when a tiny chain

drags across a silvery chime.

Flecks of light dance on the ceiling

from figures that gleam as they pass the flame.

That sight, that sound, that warm candle

shine through the years. You look out the window:

What are you doing with the years that shine

around and around when the angels come?

—William Stafford

[Page 41]

For The Governor’s Inaugural

I.

We have a way—a kind—of life. We want

more sky, but we take the days as they become

around us—the makings of now, the paths not made.

We share a state worth sharing, its dim

aisles, its rain—so local, and so all over.

Today again we owe these times our hope.

We know one party now—contemporaries,

that largest family. We hold our state

around us like a coat and count its faults,

its worth, how it can lose, or gain—its light, its darkness. . . .

II.

Last night I heard the wolf again

telling God what man has done,

and God’s great silence received it all

so deep and grand that debt was paid.

“I am The North; I hear,” God said.

The moon pouring centuries onto Now

made shadows yearn across the snow

and distilled from the cold, stunned lakes

this call:

III.

Be ours, you leaders who guide our state.

Remind us in time about tomorrow

and the faith our neighbors deserve of us,

also people afar. Help us be worthy—

Be generous. Make the days a gift,

this place on Earth, and our part of time.

We turn to you. We offer our trust,

faith for faith: be wise for us.

—William Stafford

[Page 42]

This is a letter to Rachel Jean Greenough
on the occasion of her 18th birthday,
February 17, 2001

On the day you were born

I was working on a skiff

Preparing the wood for water and the

Sodden death that water does:

The ribs, the skin, sanding, painting

The season about to begin.

After you were born,

It was only four hours after, I saw you

And I thought of that skiff

And the long waters beyond the rocks.

You, of course, were very small

and beautiful.

I do not know where you are on this evening

Of your 18th birthday.

If there are forget-me-nots where you are

I imagine them braided tightly in your hair

I imagine you dancing in a long skirt

On a beach somewhere, where the water

Licks and riffles on your feet.

Such gentle water, Rachel,

So perfect.

Thousands of years ago

The Vikings launched their dead in ships

And burned them.

The women would sing from the shore,

The boats burned to the waterline,

Then hissing, sank below the surface.

You and I are separated now,

have lost touch,

But listen, listen for the voices of those women.

A greater silence than thought has followed them,

And I am out beyond the rocks

In my small skiff,

Watching you dance on the sand

Laughing myself to see you still

So beautiful.

[Page 43]

Remember Rachel that on the day you were born

I was the first man, not of your blood

To love you,

And even though there is so much water

And as many rocks as stars in the darkness

That love is as perfect

As the songs on the shore.

Even if the singers have lost touch

Or are gone,

Their voices are still strong.

—John Straley

[Page 44]

Hawaiian Fireside

The wind of the Spirit blows free

in this place of mingling cultures and races.

A Fiji Islander sings his calypso

the echoes filling the room with sound.

Questions and answers, a dialogue

of light spills over the seekers.

Now the Martyrs’ song in Farsi

quickens the hearts, as tears

of sorrow and joy combine to wipe away

the last remnants of materialism

A wondrous grace floods the peoples

of the world, as they look into one

another’s eyes and see oneness. What matters

the color, the culture, the flowers are

in one garden now and the brilliant varied-

colored lights illuminate the night,

and the trade winds flow through

the open window and the red sun

falls into the sea.

—Joan Imig Taylor

Possession

Love has not done with us

Though we thought it tamed,

Docile to our tether,

Meek, possessed and named.

Pecking from our lax palm

Who’d guess this mild, owned thing

In frenzy might elude us

On wild violent wing?

It was Love had caged us

In inattentive pride;

Unchecked, now stalks the dark wood

Where we blindly ride.

Love has not done with us,

Not yet, heart, not yet.

It rages to subdue us,

Will have us for pet.

—Roger White

[Page 45]

The Caving Grounds

My husband tries to frighten me with

stories about the Upper Peninsula where

German spies photographed the Negaunee hotel

while pretending to be circus

performers, sword swallowers and

acrobats, photographing the lumber

yards, Black River falls, White Mountain,

and the caving grounds

where his grandma’s neighbor may have been

murdered, angry at her husband’s neglect

deciding to walk home by the caving grounds

instead of taking his pickup truck—

perhaps seeing a willow instead of barbed wire

her throat a red flower in an ordinary housedress.

frightening me with stories about her still

walking the caving grounds as real

as the Albino Women, the Gorgons, who appear

to me each night. When I ask what they want,

each turns into snakes; as real as the quilt

patches that waver like an aurora borealis

that I saw for the first time; as real as

Hutterites wearing polka dot dresses.

I don’t need anyone to frighten me

I still want the house near the mining

location where the lakes underneath

support the frame, though the water

may appear like the water of my eye;

though her body may float under me even

as I sleep, a roseate fan.

—Jan Zerfas

[Page 46]

Authors & Artists

ELLIOT ABHAU is a poet.

TOM ANDREWS is a senior at Hope College, Holland, Michigan, where he is majoring in English and philosophy.

LYNN ANN ASCRIZZI, a senior editor of Farmstead Magazine, has published many articles on home gardening and wood heat.

DICK BARNES is a professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His publications include articles, poetry, and translations. He plays and sings with the Real Time Jazz Band.

THERESE BECKER is a poet, freelance journalist, and a photojournalist who is working on a degree at Oakland University in Michigan.

BRET BRENEMAN is an English instructor at the University of Hawaii College of Continuing Education.

JOYCE ANTHONY CALDWELL is a freelance writer and painter and the president of the Lake Land Arts Association, Burt, New York, which she helped form.

DANIEL CALTO is a student and carpenter.

DRUZELLE CEDERQUIST teaches English as a second language at the Zaria’s Children’s School in Nigeria.

STEPHEN DUNNING is a professor of English at the University of Michigan. He has written and edited numerous texts for school children and college students and has published three chapbooks of his poems: Handfuls of Us (1979), Walking Home Dead (1981), and Do You Fear No One (1982).

LEE ANNE ERRINGTON holds an associate degree in social work and now works as a secretary.

FREDERICK GLAYSHER holds a Master’s degree in English language and literature from the University of Michigan, the University Press of Which has accepted for publication his edition of The Collected Prose of Robert Hayden. His review of Gerald Graff’s Literature Against Itself appeared in our Spring 1983 issue.

ANNE HUTCHINSON is on the editorial board of Moving Out, a feminist literary and arts journal.

DIANE JOLLY, a partner in Bleything & Jolly Writing, has had her poems published in Dog River Review, Moose Magazine, and College English.

SEN MCGLINN, a native of New Zealand, published Dawn Dreams in 1973. He lives on a small yacht that haunts the small harbors of Hauraki Gulf.

KIM J. MEILICKE is an assistant editor for Naturegraph Publishers.

RENEE PASAROW, having published two articles on the near-death experience, is now working on her first novel.

ROSEY E. POOL, who was born in Holland, discovered the poetry of Countee Cullen in 1925 and began a long-time interest in American Negro poetry. She encouraged an interest in Afro-American [Page 47] poetry in Paul Breman, who published her first anthology of Negro poetry (I Saw How Black I Was) and Robert Hayden’s Ballad of Remembrance (in 1962). Pool published a second anthology of Negro poetry in 1962—Beyond the Blues—and she made the first English translation of the diary of her now-famous student, Anne Frank, an account of which appeared in World Order’s Spring 1972 issue.

REBECCA ROBERTS is a freelance journalist who has had her poetry published in The Beloit Poetry Journal and Passages Northwest.

CAL E. ROLLINS has taught creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and was for a year the poet-in-residence for the New Mexico Poets-in-the-Schools Program. A frequent contributor to World Order, he has had his poems published in a variety of poetry magazines.

CAROLINE SERVID teaches part time at Island Community College, Sitka, Arkansas, and cohosts a half-hour weekly radio show on poetry. Two of her poems appeared in Loonlark: The Orca Anthology of Poetry and Prose.

WILLIAM STAFFORD, Professor Emeritus at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, was in 1974 named Poet Laureate of the State of Oregon and in 1970-71 served as consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress. He has also been honored with a National Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His many collections of poems include Traveling Through the Dark; The Rescued Years; Allegiances; Some Day, Maybe; Stories That Could Be True; A Glass Face in the Rain (all from Harper and Row); Things That Happen Where There Aren’t Any People (BOA Publications); and Sometimes Like a Legend (Copper Canyon Press).

JOHN STRALEY works with the U.S. Forest Service.

JOAN IMIG TAYLOR has published her poems in a variety of poetry magazines, university quarterlies, and children’s magazines. She is a frequent contributor to World Order.

JUNE MANNING THOMAS is an associate professor at Michigan State University with a joint appointment in the urban planning and urban affairs program. She has published articles on the effects of tourism and land development in South Carolina, urban displacement, and racial discrimination and urban minorities.

ROGER WHITE, a native of Canada now living in Israel, is a writer, artist, and craftsman of many talents. He has had two volumes of poetry published: Another Song, Another Season and The Witness of Pebbles.

JAN ZERFAS is an instructor at Lansing (Michigan) Community College and associate editor of Labyris, a feminist small press magazine.

ART CREDITS: Cover, design by John Solarz, photograph by Leonora Cetone Starr; pp. 1, 3, photographs by Delton Baerwolf; p. 7, photograph by Grace Nielsen; pp. 8, 18, photographs by Delton Baerwolf; p. 23, photograph by Joan Miller; pp. 24, 48, photographs by Delton Baerwolf.

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