"My Heart like a Nation" by Philip Metres

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day October 28, 2019   My Heart like a Nation   Philip Metres

for Yehuda Amichai You threw off your exile  by clothing yourself in praise, Yehuda, saying, my nation is alive, Amichai, in me, inhabiting your own body,  your mother-beloved skin. I'm hairy like you, and afraid, like you, I'm half-animal and half-angel, uncertain  where my tenderness ends and cruelty begins. We did what we had to do, you wrote, which in translation reads:                                     .  Yehuda, I want your clarity— to love you, not close the gates of my heart like a nation trying to make itself a home but winding up with a state.  Psalmist, you spoke so tenderly of peace, but the war persists.  All I have for you is this poem: a man photographs the sudden undulating hills. Behind him,  a woman he loves now dreams that their bed's legs grow roots beneath, overnight, and spreads a canopy of branches that shoot pink blooms open and open, now green with shushing leaves  that shelter and shadow the rucked bedsheets, the branches burdened with red apples, apples like eyes ready to be praised                                            and plucked.                Copyright © 2019 by Philip Metres. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "My Heart Like a Nation" wrestles with the legacy and poetry of Yehuda Amichai, an Israeli poet who also served as a soldier during Israel's War of Independence, which dispossessed and exiled 750,000 Palestinians and led to the destruction of over 400 villages. In addition to working with Amichai's poems, 'My Heart' benefited from conversations with Fady Joudah, Adam Sol, and Amy Breau, on questions of colonial possession and dispossession, poetic erasure of the other, as well as acknowledging and making amends for the past. Is every Eden just someone's bulldozed home? 'My Heart' is from the forthcoming Shrapnel Maps, a book tracing the hurt and tender places of the Israel-Palestine predicament, abiding with voices and archival traces too often canceled out by political noise." —Philip Metres   Philip Metres is the author of Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon, 2020). He is a professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Poetry by Metres   Shrapnel Maps  (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) "Memorial Day for the War Dead" by Yehuda Amichai "Things You've Never Seen" by Fady Joudah "Two Countries" by Naomi Shihab Nye October Guest Editor: Oliver de la Paz   Thanks to Oliver de la Paz, author of five collections of poetry, including The Boy in the Labyrinth (University of Akron Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Paz about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. A culture break, a source of daily renewal...   If reading Poem-a-Day has become a meaningful part of your day, please consider supporting this free series with a donation. Your gift makes publishing Poem-a-Day possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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