transformations

by joy harjo from in mad love and war

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 splintered 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 treading the far northern tundra, smelling the
air for sweet alive meat. or a piece of seaweed stumbling in the sea. or a
blackbird, laughing. what i mean is that hatred can be turned into something
else, if you have the right words, the right meanings, buried in that tender place
in your heart where the most precious animals live. down the street an am-
bulance 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 nightmare,
from the center of miracles. she is beautiful.
this is your hatred back. she loves you.