On the first of May, my mother told me about a poet who loved volcanoes and Persephone and had just disappeared on a small island in Japan. It was his passionate belief, she said, that poets should go to dangerous places and bring them back in writing; by the time she heard about him on the radio, he had been missing for three or four days, but they were still hoping that his story would end like one of hers, the goddess he cared so much about, and he would come back with pages like pomegranate seeds in his hands. My mother couldn't remember his name, so I looked him up. Craig Arnold. This afternoon, I found out he has been declared dead. Somewhere I hope someone who knew and loved him is writing him a poem in which Persephone and Pele and the kami of Kuchinoerabujima are listening to their praise singer, or making him into something that can slip into the earth's burning heart and back again. I don't have the right to. I just liked his words. The severed head of Orpheus kept on singing, afterward the way poets do.
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- 1: Fierce as the Baltic sea
- 2: I want what's true
- 3: For when the heart's a sinking stone
- 4: I've been with him for seven years and now I'll lose my situation
- 5: Reflections coming through the radio, the telephone, the TV
- 6: Afghanistan banana stand
- 7: 'Cause living it up, it's a big deal, it's good for you
- 8: Cars and trips and maps we ripped
- 9: And the clock ticks faster every year
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