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| Rob and Max (Many, many years ago) |
16 months after Rob died I have found the courage to sit down at his computer and to begin to browse. It's a stormy night and somehow the mood seems right or perhaps the courage I needed to do this is somehow present. Rob left behind 40 notebooks and a computer filled with images and poems and stories and the the first 6 chapters of a novel he was writing when we first me. Lemmings.
I have been thinking about a poem he wrote--one I fell in love with as I was falling in love with him. I can remember him reading the poem aloud in in the basement of an old mill in Paterson, NJ at some poetry event. The emotion his voice captured. The passion. It remains.
He wrote "Faith" when he was 33-years-old. What legacies there are that he has stored and left behind in this old computer. Such gifts.
Rob Cohen
FAITH
I stood
on line
in a
chinese takeout place
on 9th
ave
while
the owner
leaned
his back
against the counter
&
spoke
on the
telephone
I wanted
to know
how
an
american phone
could
speak chinese
as if
the technology
were
language dependent
& I
thought
of all
the prejudice
I was
taught
about
foreigners
that
each country
has a
separate history
that all
those people
in all
those places
are
different
that
this
is
america
&
our technology
is ours
do you
picture china
with
phones?
Or do
you see
a
peasant
farmer
in a
coolie hat
&
loose garment
in a
paddy
hungry
or
perhaps
at work
bent over
some old
piece of equipment
in an
antiquated sweatshop
in a
rickety seaport warehouse
where
there are no downtowns
this man
who
spoke chinese
became
more
&
more animated
until I
realized
his
voice
was
translated
by a
device
which
does not remember
conversation
yet
carries out
an
ordered transfer
of
energies,
his voice
broken
into parts
dissembled
&
reassembled
in a
demonstration
of 3rd
grade science
where
atoms
are made
of parts
so small
that the
distance between them
is
comparably vast
as in a
solar system
where
most of everything
is made
of nothing
is this
the logos?
No. It
is just
cheap
talk.
& I
wondered
who
was on
the other end
of the
line--
a
chinese man
in
china?
do you
see him
in a
3-pc suit
briefcase
in hand
as he
stands
in a
tall building
an
important man
with a
corner office
one
window
a view
of the
waterfront
the
other
of the
countryside
No.
He spoke
to a different china
--the
one downtown
is a
selfsufficient village
a bunch
of brownstones
where
gardeners work underground
old
apothecaries
have
potions for everything
&
the gang of 4
wears
leather jackets
knives
& chains
a west
side story
in
chinese
&
because the words that carried
across
connections
were
messages
of a
confused culture
chinatownman
in a
broken down universe
tells us
how it
is
each
mystery
lessens
the number of things
we
understand
about
democratic laws
that let
a chinese man
speak
his ancestors tongue
on an
american phone
laws
which last
&
work
only
as we
believe in them
did we
want phones?
Doctrine
tells us
to stay
on the line
just
hold on
it will
work better
once we
find the explanation
for all
of this
we can
harness
this
universe, understand
its
every machination
an
autism
which
barely initiates
is its
own language
it keeps
every
last bit moving
when we
already know
what it
means to believe
that the
way we have come
is not
the way
things are
.
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