Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem ‘Facing It’ is about reflection, the kind of thing your eye catches with refracted light and the kind of thing your mind catches when it considers it all again.
It begins:
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
Komunyakaa, who was an Army correspondent in Vietnam, was standing in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The image is of man turning to stone and back to man again.
In the wall’s reflection, white people fade into black people. The poet thinks one woman is trying to erase names from the wall, but he sees only the reflection of a woman brushing a boy’s hair.
• Source: The Poetry Foundation published this here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47867/facing-it
Don’t miss the recording. This train of thought on Komunyakaa started with a war poem. Perhaps this war poem is a good place to end it.
No comments:
Post a Comment