Footnote to an article in the Guardian (subject irrelevant ): This article was amended on Monday 13 May to remove two rogue apostrophes.
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The book is not only about adventure, childlike wonder, and running away from home. It intimates that the sheer mundanity of life practically requires these things.
In the end, even if Neruda died of cancer, as was said at the time, his exhumation is an opportunity to reinforce the message to authoritarians everywhere that a poet’s words will always outlast theirs, and the blind praise of their powerful friends.
I am not certain that we are better off for knowing the molecular story rather than the folk tale, or whether there is room for both. Science can tell you how genetic anomalies and birth defects happen, but not why they happened to you rather than your neighbour. Medical facts can rarely offer the level of comfort that stories can. At least in our personal narratives, we have control. Here is the value of folklore: it gives shape to the unknowable. This can be uplifting or dangerous, but ultimately it explains human difference in a way that science never will.
On Mother’s Day
I went out walking
in the old neighborhood
Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivy lantana shining
and geraniums in the window
Twenty years ago
it was believed that the roots of trees
would insert themselves into gas lines
then fall poisoned on houses and children
or tap the city’s water pipes starved
for nitrogen obstruct the sewers
In those days in the afternoon I floated
by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island
then pushed the babies in their carriages
along the river wall observing Manhattan
See Manhattan I cried New York!
even at sunset it doesn’t shine
but stands in fire charcoal to the waist
But this Sunday afternoon on Mother’s Day
I walked west and came to Hudson Street tricolored flags
were flying over old oak furniture for sale
brass bedsteads copper pots and vases
by the pound from India
Suddenly before my eyes twenty-two transvestites
in joyous parade stuffed pillows under
their lovely gowns
and entered a restaurant
under a sign which said All Pregnant Mothers Free
I watched them place napkins over their bellies
and accept coffee and zabaglione
I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
since my father died as a child
one week ago in this his ninetieth year
Grace Paley
