Poem by Lo Galluccio

Photo by Bill Perrault



Patti Smith
After Reading Strange Messenger

“To cry Awake Awake
wake up arms delicate feet
we are paramount then obsolete…”
--Patti Smith, early poem in Collected Lyrics, 2006

What fury and patience does she possess
this American artist, saint and poetess?

Shine like a star and writhe like a snake
for our sake, to invent her songs--and carry us along?

Rock and roll and the names of the dead
on paper wings of the planes burning on 9/11
the remains of the kingdom fell and the ashes of people
delivered from limbo to heaven--

with her colored scrawl pens and paper,
with her raw wail and whisper, with her lithe frame devoted--
will she keep us whole again? Will she keep us in line
again? Remembering Gandhi and King and Christ,
the Tower of Babel, elephant and mice?

Who sings of Jubilee while the war rages on, while we walk crest-fallen
through the rooms of winter? Snow, bitter, glisten, glitter and spring.

This is Patti Smith's--our--awakening.

Who sings of Jubilee while the war rages on, while we walk crest-fallen
through the rooms of dawn? Snow, bitter, glisten, glitter and spring.

This is Patti Smith's--our--awakening.

Whose is the grace and the anger of such a human
with sword of language brandishing?
Whose is the face of the crow-child risen like a rose
of compassion, bird of imagining?

This is Patti Smith's--our--awakening.