These poems are taken from The Saltwater Letters, my forthcoming volume chiefly made up of poem-letters to friends, family, and fellow writers. This book-to-be began a number of years ago with a letter to the late Lucille Clifton, then several others coming in quick succession. Then, as I indicate in “Lost Letter to Yusef Komunyakaa,” I left a notebook filled with drafted letters in the seatback pocket of a plane. I never could recreate what was lost.
The poems that remain aren’t exactly signed, but, like all letters, they offer a form of address, suggesting an occasion and a location, a reader or recipient. I’ve long been drawn to the way that especially handwritten letters have a sense of urgency and immediacy, not to mention an unselfconsciousness that happens from something sent via the mail that you may never see again. Letters, like poems, tell more than they know. The archive is filled not just with words but inadvertent confessions, contained in everything from penmanship to the paper itself.
Looking back, I see that different forms of correspondence have long made their way into my work, whether that’s “Letters from the North Star,” the final poem in my first book; an “Urgent Telegram to Jean-Michel Basquiat,” from my second book; or the purposefully misspelled tap dance of “Correspondance,” a series of letters in the voice of the Amistad Rebels eventually included in the epic Ardency. The first of these channeled the voice of someone out of the blue, while the latter sets of missives were ways of addressing not just a person but history.
These Saltwater Letters remain a declaration of the present, addressing the now—and seeking to go beyond what always threatens to be lost.
Letter to Tracy K. Smith from the Bottom of the Ocean
There are cities down here,
You know—choirs of coral,
A constellation of bones.
Once we embrace the descent
It gets easier, doesn’t it—
We can see the universe
Only in reverse, a shirt
Turned inside out we are
Already wearing. Threadbare
& borrowed,
Like God.
I want to see
The depths of the question
Posed by the ocean—
How a world can be
Mostly unseen
& still move us, to float
Then to dive—leaving
The known behind.
Letter to the Dark Lady
What kills me
is how little
time we have
even to say
goodbye. We try
watching each
minute hand
twitch as if it might
trip a wire, could
send the world
away from us, or up,
leave whatever
names we’ve known
& find ourselves
flown.
But the bills
keep coming
due, the grudoo
won’t scrub off
the glass without
great effort—the light
always about to get
cut off so we fight
to stay asleep.
The night
she died I dreamt
in the dark
that I walked,
a stranger, past
houses also dark, or
filled with long laughter
of what could only
be kin, & someone
exited through a screen
door & followed
after me—
I fear
the worst, but turns
out I am
a Holloway, he says
so tonight, in dream, we’re almost
brothers. We walk,
cousined, together past
quiet cars, the white truck
backing silently up—Get out
the way— till we
are where we must
been headed all
along.
What do
you want? he asks
in that bright dive,
at this window where what
you ask after gets made.
Only thing to do
in this tiny town
where we’re born
& end is to eat
amidst the blues
& well.
We do & laugh
at ourselves, at the hill
we’ll have to walk
down from, dawn
in the distance gathering
strength to strike
its match—blazoned
blue yellow orange—
then blows
on out.
As ever—
Lost Letter to Yusef Komunyakaa
Sir—
I lost the first
Letter I wrote you
Midair, on a plane,
In a notebook no one
Bothered to save.
Whatever it did say
The wind now knows
Though this is mostly
What I was saying to you
This side of the moon.
It is dark
Out tonight. We both hail
Not far from each other,
Where the Louisiana fields
Grow so familiar
I cannot remember
What they are
Without me, though
Soon, that’s all
They’ll be.
One day—
This parade
Of words that wish
To stay, piano
Out of tune.
The song
A man sings, standing
Tall, a grey
Hat, unbroken back,
Hands who’ve held
More than their share—
Now clasped.
Tonight,
Brother, I’m telling you
I’m feeling black & new
As the moon.
Letter to My Editor
Yesterday, summer; today
Autumn everywhere. The rain,
The cloudy eye of the dog going
Blind, the church bells all agog.
We know what words aren’t:
Enough. Sundays the song
Once more of football, pain
In the congregation, the hymns
Of battles long ago. FREE DC
On a lamppost bright that doesn’t
Know it’s day.
From the bleachers our cries
Unmet neighbors answer.
Cats in strollers, groceries,
ADOPT ME pinned on a leash.
The Scottish Rite quiet.
Outside the inn where
There’s no more room
A man fishes
In ashtrays for butts
& affection—finds some
He lights with what
I cannot see. The haze
Soon burns away & maybe
Words too can shine.
Tonight, we are
Almost winter—sleep late
Though the light doesn’t.
There isn’t enough left
To save, but we bring it
Home anyway.
Kevin Young is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including Night Watch, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry and is longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and Stones, a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He is the poetry editor of the New Yorker and hosts the poetry podcast.
