Here is a poem by Simon Ortiz called "A Story of How A Wall Stands":
At Aacqu, there is a wall almost 400 years old which supports hundreds of tons of dirt and bones - it's a graveyard built on a steep incline - and it looks like it's about to fall down the incline but it will not for a long time
My father, who works with stone,
says, "That's just the part you see,
The stones which seem to be
just packed in on the outside,"
and with his hands puts the stone and mud
in place. "Underneath what looks like loose stone,
there is stone woven together."
He ties one hand over the other,
fitting like the bones of his hands
and fingers. "That's what is
Holding it together."
"It is built that carefully,"
he says, "the mud mixed
to a certain texture," patiently
"with the fingers," worked
in the palm of his hand. "So that
placed between the stones, they hold
together for a long, long time."
He tells me those things,
the story of them worked
with his fingers, in the palm
of his hands, working the stone
and the mud until they become
the wall that stands a long, long time.
I love the way Ortiz intertwines the explanation of the ancient wall with the father's work. Is the father repairing the old wall? Or building a new one? There are many walls in the poem. Any comments?
2 comments:
There are no walls in this poem. Walls symbolize separation. This poem is all about connectedness--son to father, connectedness of the generations. Also, the "wall" is connected to the land, as the people are. On the outside it looks to be falling. But it will stand, peraps long after our own "wall" culture of boundaries, borders and disconnectedness is gone.
At first a person may see the wall as chaotic and without form and reason. The wall may fall down, it is crumbly. But, underneath there are rocks that have been woven together in a special way. It is like the dna that is woven together from the poet's ancestors through his father. There were no chance or haphazard placements of the stones. Each one was carefully placed so that the son could know his past. The son sees the work his father's hands did and his other ancestors and realizes it is all for him to have a full life which requires that he know the stories of where he came from.
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