<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">By The Way<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><i class="">For Adrienne Rich</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div id="content" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class=""><div itemprop="articleBody" class="articleBody" id="articleBody" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="poetry" style="border: 0px; margin: 14px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I’ve given it time, as if time were mine to give.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">There was a dam, larger than Hoover or the President or the patent</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">For the metal creature that sucks up all the dust.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Words had to stop and ask permission before crossing over.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Oh, sometimes they were wild with the urgency of sweet</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">And leaped—</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Mostly the rest were kept in the net</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Of swallowed or forbidden language.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I want to go back and rewrite all the letters.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I lied frequently.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">No. I was not O.K.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">And neither was James Baldwin, though his essays</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">To assert humanness in a black-and-white world.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">That’s how blues emerged, by the way—</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">The music, a sack that carries the bones of those left alongside</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">The trail of tears when we were forced</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">To leave everything we knew by the way—</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I constructed an individual life in the so-called <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">civilized</em> world.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">We all did—far from the trees and plants</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Who had born us and fed us.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">All I wanted was the music, I would tell you now—</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Within it, what we cannot carry.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I talk about <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" class="">then</em> from a hotel room just miles</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">From your home in the East</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Before you fled on your personal path of tears</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">To the West, that worn-out American Dream</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Dogging your steps.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">You lived on a pedestal for me then, the driven diver who climbed</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Back up from the abyss, Venus on a seashell with a dagger</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">In her hands.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I had to look, and followed your tracks in the poems</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Cut by suffering.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Aren’t they all?</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">We’re in the apocalyptic age of addiction and forgetting.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">It’s worse now.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">But that dam, I had to tell you. I broke it open stone by stone.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">It took a saxophone, flowers, and your words</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Had something to do with it</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I can’t say exactly how.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">The trajectory wasn’t clean, even though it was sure.</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Does that make sense?</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Maybe it does only in the precincts of dreams and poetry,</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Not in a country lit twenty-four hours a day to keep dreams stuck</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Turning in a wheel</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">In the houses of money.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">I read about transcendence, how the light</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">Came in through the window of a nearby traveller</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">And every cell of creation opened its mouth</span><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">To drink grace.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 410px 32px 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(18, 18, 18); box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: geometricprecision; display: block;" class="">That’s what I never told you.</span></p><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Joy Harjo</div></div></div></div>
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<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br class=""></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”</i></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">Wendell Berry</i></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br class=""></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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