Vox Populi
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Thomas Lux: And Still It Comes
like a downhill brakes-burned freight train
full of pig iron ingots, full of lead
life-size statues of Richard Nixon,
like an avalanche of smoke and black fog
lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips
of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal,
remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back,
faster when you turn to face it,
like a fine rain, then colder showers,
then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail,
fist-size, then jagged
laser, shrapnel hail
thudding and tearing like footsteps
of drunk gods or fathers; it comes
polite, loutish, assured, suave,
breathing through its mouth
(which is a hole eaten by a cave),
it comes like an elephant annoyed,
like a black mamba terrified, it slides
down the valley, grease on grease,
like fire eating birds’ nests,
like fire melting the fuzz
off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute
and gorging, never
to cease, insatiable, gorging
and mute.
~~~~
From New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995. Copyright © 1997 by Thomas Lux published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Thomas Lux (1946 – 2017) was an American poet who held the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology He wrote fourteen books of poetry. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, the son of a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator, neither of whom graduated from high school. Lux was raised in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. A Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lux received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his sixth collection, Split Horizons.
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This might be the darkest part:
faster when you turn your back,
faster when you turn to face it,
or, for some of us, maybe this:
tearing like footsteps
of drunk gods or fathers
There’s a new book coming out in February by Rima Vesely-Flad titled “The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde”. The book’s theme is the wisdom that these two brought to flourishing in spite of all that Lux speaks of here.
May we all find that sustaining fire.
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Thank you for this, Tony.
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You hit the jackpot today, Michael—with these two Toms.
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Yes, I did!
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So many fine comments here! I only can add “Wow!” This poem soars with all the horrible energy of the autocratic machine destroying democracy. Thank you, Michael
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Thanks, Mary.
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This is a truly an ‘awesome’ poem. I am in awe of his work generally. But this extraordinary poem puts into so many amazing words a nameless, relentless dread, one we have all felt from time to time, and with which right now we are exceedingly familiar. Wow!
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A nameless, relentless dread. Exactly.
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He did tell it slant, but TOLD IT, over & over & over. He wrote of love and the human condition, politics and religion with such passion and conviction. And ear. And vocabulary. And voice! No one wrote or writes like Tom. I have a picture of him close by — for I love that loyal pal of ours with all my heart. We were close buddies, Tom, Kurt and I.
If you have never heard him read, please, look up one of his readings, for no one read or reads aloud like him either. If you Google “2015 10th Annual Festival: Tom Lux” in which Tom quotes Kurt and reads some of his superb poems…
Thanks for posting Tom Lux poems regularly, Michael…
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One of my faves, Laure-Anne. I met him when I was a teenager, a baby poet, and he was very encouraging to me. I’ve always admired his poems for their wise craft and odd humor.
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I was lucky to hear Tom read, here in Michigan, several times, and to talk with him. Once, at the close of a writing conference, he joined a group of us on the dance floor! At the same conference, he gave me some wonderful encouragement — we talked about the many similarities between engineering and writing poetry! I’m grateful to have known him. I’m grateful for his work.
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Thanks, Christine. He was a fine poet and a good man.
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The Light Man’s poem burns out possibilities. Inexorable what happens, it seems to say, (though we did stop Nixon). A grief-bearing shout.
As I read it, setting aside today’s events, because Lux’s remarkable poem was written twenty years ago or probably more, I tried to solve the puzzle of what It is. I guessed either death or lies. My left-brained take. Well, we currently have the celebration by some of both lying and death; so maybe it works for our current runaway train of terror with its crazy engineer shoveling in more coal.
It also reminds me, through its dogpiling of imagery, of how current psychopathic authoritarians dump their offal on us. In praise of Lux’s poem, it may be one of the most well-crafted rants ever disgorged.
This sounds like a critique of the poem, no, I thought it was grimly ironic. And Mel Packer’s comment is spot on about fascism.
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Thanks, Jim. I love your extended comments in this space.
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People talk about ‘flash fiction’ but, Jim, you are creating ‘flash critical essays.’ You write a short response that depends on analysis and interpretation. Thank you. I look forward to your comments each day.
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So do I! Thank you Jim!
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I’m moved by the dynamic Vox Populi folks, and their empathy for poetry and the world.
And speaking of flash critical essays, it reminds me of the passing of Diane Keaton, the actor, and of a scene from her academy award winning performance in Annie Hall. It’s the scene where she and Woody Allen are in line to get into a movie, and the guy in line behind them is explaining the intricacies of media theory to his date, driving Woody crazy with his pontificating…I try not to be that guy. google Annie Hall and Marshall McLuhan.
It’s quite a scene.
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I love that scene. Woody pulls McLuhan out of line to explain to the pontificator how he misunderstands the issue.
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Yes, I love your comments to, and your wonder and joy in language!
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Thank you. It’s enriching to be a part of the Vox Populi community. We are a good bunch.
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Yes, it is!
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We are a good bunch. And good looking too.
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Yes. Thank you for this, Mel. Lux knew the seriousness of the situation, but told it slant.
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He was the best.
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Tom was great.
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What a great wake-up poem. Choose your own”it,” personal or national or global- Tom is right: it comes and we choose how to respond. How Lux be funny in every bizarre situation lift brings!
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How Lux of you, Luray.
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This is how fascism arrives. We are seeing it in Portland and Chicago and soon coming to a neighborhood near you in all of its blazing patriotic glory and with the bravado of troops knowing they have no restraints and no possibility of punishment for their crimes. Designed to instill fear, to instill terror, to make its victims believe it is invincible and all powerful, its screams of anger and hate ultimately reveal that the emperor has no clothes as the masses, defying its threats and actions, bare the pitchforks of our lives and reveal the naked child cowering in the corner of its toy adorned bed.
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Yes. Thank you for this, Mel. Lux knew the seriousness of the situation, but told it slant.
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