{"id":2372,"date":"2017-08-21T17:13:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T21:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:46:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:46:49","slug":"aug-21-dunya-mikhail-a-poet-a-historian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2017\/08\/21\/aug-21-dunya-mikhail-a-poet-a-historian\/","title":{"rendered":"Aug 21  Dunya Mikhail &#8211; a  poet, a historian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, August 21<br \/>\n&#8220;watching the fragments of our first dreams<br \/>\nfor a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>My hand on the map<br \/>\nas if on an old scar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Every so many weeks, I look to a poem by Dunya Mikhail, a fellow citizen of Metro Detroit, and a refugee from Iraq in 1996. \u00a0 I\u2019ve only known her poetry since last March when Joy Harjo introduced us. \u00a0 Poems like today\u2019s locate the sensuality of lived experience in long stretches of remembered history. \u00a0 In \u201cMy Grandmother\u2019s Grave,\u201d delicate memories remembered through the poet\u2019s senses \u2014 touch and sight and hearing \u2014 \u00a0can take a reader\u2019s imagination thousands of years into the past, only to abruptly relocate her grandmother in the ruins of wars.\u00a0 The poet places her grandmother amid the ruined artifacts that recall her heritage.<\/p>\n<p>A challenging poem for this week when many new students arrive to risk the challenges a university places before them, many openings out into a wide world.<\/p>\n<p>Have a blest week.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>john st sj<\/p>\n<p><strong>Today\u2019s Post\u00a0\u00a0 &#8212;\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cMy Grandmother\u2019s Grave\u201d<br \/>\nWhen my grandmother died<br \/>\nI thought, \u201cShe can\u2019t die again.\u201d<br \/>\nEverything in her life<br \/>\nhappened once and forever:<br \/>\nher bed on our roof,<br \/>\nthe battle of good and evil in her tales,<br \/>\nher black clothes,<br \/>\nher mourning for her daughter who<br \/>\n\u201cwas killed by headaches,\u201d<br \/>\nthe rosary beads and her murmur,<br \/>\n\u201cForgive us our sins,\u201d<br \/>\nher empty vase from the Ottoman time,<br \/>\nher braid, each hair a history\u2009\u2014<\/p>\n<p>First were the Sumerians,<br \/>\ntheir dreams inscribed in clay tablets.<br \/>\nThey drew palms, so dates ripen before their sorrows.<br \/>\nThey drew an eye to chase evil<br \/>\naway from their city.<br \/>\nThey drew circles and prayed for them:<br \/>\na drop of water<br \/>\na sun<br \/>\na moon<br \/>\na wheel spinning faster than Earth.<br \/>\nThey begged: \u201cOh gods, don\u2019t die and leave us alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the Tower of Babel,<br \/>\nlight is exile,<br \/>\nblurred,<br \/>\nits codes crumbs of songs<br \/>\nleftover for the birds.<\/p>\n<p>More naked emperors<br \/>\npassed by the Tigris<br \/>\nand more ships . . .<br \/>\nThe river full<br \/>\nof crowns<br \/>\nhelmets<br \/>\nbooks<br \/>\ndead fish,<br \/>\nand on the Euphrates, corpse-lilies floating.<\/p>\n<p>Every minute a new hole in the body of the ship.<\/p>\n<p>The clouds descended on us<br \/>\nwar by war,<br \/>\npicked up our years,<br \/>\nour hanging gardens,<br \/>\nand flew away like storks.<\/p>\n<p>We said there isn\u2019t any worse to come.<\/p>\n<p>Then the barbarians came<br \/>\nto the mother of two springs.<br \/>\nThey broke my grandmother\u2019s grave: my clay tablet.<br \/>\nThey smashed the winged bulls whose eyes<br \/>\nwere sunflowers<br \/>\nwidely open<br \/>\nwatching the fragments of our first dreams<br \/>\nfor a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>My hand on the map<br \/>\nas if on an old scar.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2017\/08\/Dunya-Mikhail.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2373\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2017\/08\/Dunya-Mikhail.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"252\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dunya\u00a0Mikhail<\/p>\n<p>b. 1965, Baghdad, Iraq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, August 21 &#8220;watching the fragments of our first dreams for a lifetime. My hand on the map as if on an old scar.\u201d Every so many weeks, I look to a poem by Dunya Mikhail, a fellow citizen of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2017\/08\/21\/aug-21-dunya-mikhail-a-poet-a-historian\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}