redemption

THE WATER'S CHANT

Seven years ago I went into
the High Sierras stunned
by the desire
to die. For hours I stared
into a clear
mountain stream that fell down
over speckled rocks, and then I
closed my eyes and
prayed that when
I opened them I would be gone
and somewhere a purple and golden
thistle would overflow with light.
I had not prayed since I was a child
and at first I felt foolish saying
the name of God, and then it became
another word. All the while
I could hear the water's chant
below my voice. At last I opened
my eyes to the same place, my hands
cupped and I drank long from
the stream,
and then turned for home
not even stopping
to find the thistle
that blazed by my path.
Since then
I have gone home to the city
of my birth and found it gone,
a gray and treeless one now in its place.
The one house I loved the most
simply missing in a row of houses,
the park where I napped on summer days
fenced and locked, the great shop
where we forged, a plane of rubble,
the old hurt faces turned away.
My brother was with me, thickened
by the years, but still my brother,
and when we em- braced
I felt the rough
cheek and his hand
upon my back tapping
as though to tell me, I know! I know!
brother, I know!
Here in California
a new day begins. Full dull clouds ride
in from the sea, and this dry valley
calls out for rain. My brother has
risen hours ago and hobbled to the shower
and gone out into
the city of death
to trade his life for nothing because
this is the world.
I could pray now,
but not to die,
for that will come one
day or another. I could pray for
his bad leg or my son John
whose luck
is rotten,
or for four
new teeth, but
instead I watch my eucalyptus,
the giant in my front
yard, bucking
and swaying in the wind
and hear its

tidal roar. In the
strange new light
the leaves overflow
purple and gold,
and a fiery dust showers
into the day.

Philip Levine