Transformations | Joy Harjo

Friday, April 18, 2008

This poem is a letter to tell you that I have smelled the hatred you
have tried to find me with; you would like to destroy me. Bone splin-
tered in the eye of one you choose to name your enemy won't make
it better for you to see. It could take a thousand years if you name it
that way, but then, to see after all that time, never could anything
be so clear. Memory has many forms. When I think of early winter I
think of a blackbird laughing in the frozen air; guards a piece of
light. (I saw the whole world caught in that sound, the sun stopped
for a moment because of tough belief.) I don't know what that has
to do with what I am trying to tell you except that I know you can
turn a poem into something else. This poem could be a bear tread-
ing the far northern tundra, smelling the air for sweet alive meat.
Or a piece of seaweed stumbling in the sea. Or a blackbird, laugh-
ing. What I mean is that hatred can be turned into something else,
if you have the right words, the right meanings, buried in that ten-
der place in your heart where the most precious animals live. Down
the street an ambulance has come to rescue an old man who is
slowly losing his life. Not many can see that he is already becoming
the backyard tree he has tended for years, before he moves on. He is
not sad, but compassionate for the fears moving around him.

That's what I mean to tell you. On the other side of the place you
live stands a dark woman. She has been trying to talk to you for
years. You have called the same name in the middle of a night-
mare, from the center of miracles. She is beautiful.
This is your hatred back. She loves you.

-Joy Harjo