I Call, You Respond

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Lamb”

CALL:

Poet Linda Gregg, who has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University, writes lyrical poems that speak to grief, seeking and desire with absolute attention to craft. Poet W.S. Merwin has said about Gregg’s work: “I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.” “The Lamb,” from Gregg’s Chosen By the Lion is very much a doorway for a reader: to doom, salvation or some limbo in between?

 

The Lamb

It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
All our desire for love or children
is treated like rags by the enemy.
I knew so much and sang anyway.
Like a bird who will sing until
it is brought down. When they take
away the trees, the child picks up a stick
and says, this is a tree, this the house
and the family. As we might. Through a door
of what had been a house, into the field
of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.

 

RESPONSE #2: by Jennifer Tomlin

In 1988, at age 16, I heard “The Luminous Rose” by Robyn Hitchcock for the first time, and it stopped me in my combat boots. Raw and unapologetic, it painted a grim picture of what man is capable of doing, and enduring, during times of war. Although it’s been years since I listened to this haunting song, I was immediately reminded of it when I read “The Lamb” by Linda Gregg. However, where Hitchcock’s lyrics leave me hollow, Gregg’s poem evokes hope for the future of the world she details. First, when the child defies the enemy by picking up the stick and announcing there will be a future despite the sad present and second, when the lamb goes forth seeking knowledge. However, I wonder what awaits the lamb – is it transformation, or slaughter?

Lyrics from “The Luminous Rose” by Robyn Hitchcock

Oh, the bodies of drowned sailors and dead airmen
Flounder upside down beneath the roaring wave
And the fishes eat the flesh from off their fingers
And the sea is so much deeper than the grave

And the pale English stone stands alone over me

Oh, the bodies rise and fall in slow motion
As the flesh gives way to coral and her charms
If you listen hard you’ll hear the sea is breathing
And she’s waiting there to hold you in her arms
And the pale English sun shone over me

Oh, the telegram is lying on the table
You left it there you can’t believe its true
God finds you naked and he leaves you dying
What happens in between is up to you
And the luminous rose glows over me over me

 

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Jennifer Tomlin dislikes writing bios for herself because it makes her feel pretentious. She currently works in Princeton, NJ as a writer.