Terrance Hayes

Sigma Tau Delta is sponsoring another poetry reading at the Blue Moon Cafe tonight, and I'm thinking of reading this poem (I've pasted the whole thing below, too), one I stumbled across on a recent road-trip while I was listening to the wonderful "Poetry Off the Shelf" podcast. The lines "But to rescue a soul is as close/ as anyone comes to God" seem to be the most beautiful lines I've heard in some time--especially in reference to a man raising a child who isn't his own. The last lines are just as lovely.

The Same City

by Terrance Hayes

For James L. Hayes

The rain falling on a night

in mid-December,

I pull to my father’s engine

wondering how long I’ll remember

this. His car is dead. He connects

jumper cables to his battery,

then to mine without looking in

at me and the child. Water beads

on the windshields, the road sign,

his thin blue coat. I’d get out now,

prove I can stand with him

in the cold, but he told me to stay

with the infant. I wrap her

in the blanket, staring

for what seems like a long time

into her open, toothless mouth,

and wish she was mine. I feed her

an orange softened first in my mouth,

chewed gently until the juice runs

down my fingers as I squeeze it

into hers. What could any of this matter

to another man passing on his way

to his family, his radio deafening

the sound of water and breathing

along all the roads bound to his?

But to rescue a soul is as close

as anyone comes to God.

Think of Noah lifting a small black bird

from its nest. Think of Joseph,

raising a son that wasn’t his.

Let me begin again.

I want to be holy. In rain

I pull to my father’s car

with my girlfriend’s infant.

She was eight weeks pregnant when we met.

But we’d make love. We’d make

love below stars and shingles

while her baby kicked between us.

Perhaps a man whose young child

bears his face, whose wife waits

as he drives home through rain

& darkness, perhaps that man

would call me a fool. So what.

There is one thing I will remember

all my life. It is as small

& holy as the mouth

of an infant. It is speechless.

When his car would not stir,

my father climbed in beside us,

took the orange from my hand,

took the baby in his arms.

In 1974, this man met my mother

for the first time as I cried or slept

in the same city that holds us

tonight. If you ever tell my story,

say that’s the year I was born.

In the podcast, Hayes talks about his father hearing this poem at one of the poet's readings, and about how the two men had never before discussed the fact that he wasn't his biological dad, although it wasn't a secret. Afterwards, he explains, his father simply said, "Like that poem, man."