Believe, Believe

Image by SocialButterflyMMG from Pixabay

Ugh, the editorials these days. So hard to read, even harder to process. Soaring prices, deadly outbreaks of preventable diseases, accelerating climate change, and wars—wars not only of weapons but also of words and worldviews. It’s enough to make a person despair about the current state and future prospects of humankind.

And yet . . .

I recently returned to university teaching after several years away, and I can’t help but be heartened by the convictions, hopes, and dreams of the young people in my classes. In their eyes—brightened by passion and the conviction that they can and will change the world for the better—I am finding new reasons to believe that there is hope for us after all.

Which brings me to Bob Kaufman.

Born in New Orleans in 1925, Kaufman became a central figure in the San Francisco Beat movement. Inspired by jazz music, he lived several years as a street poet, integrating improvisation, rhythm, and notes of liberation into his largely oral body of work. His life was anything but easy. He experienced poverty, addiction, imprisonment, political repression, and electroshock therapy.

And yet . . .

Kaufman wrote this:

Believe, Believe

by Rob Kaufman (1925 - 1986)

Believe in this. Young apple seeds,
In blue skies, radiating young breast,
Not in blue-suited insects,
Infesting society’s garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,
Tearing the night into intricate shreds,
Putting it back together again,
In cool logical patterns,
Not in the sick controllers,
Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets
Ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.

From the posthumous collection, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 1996)