Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn is a regular Open Mic guest on Boston Public Radio. In recent weeks, Koehn intimated to BPR cohosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan that she's a poet. Koehn promised to read a poem on the show.
On Tuesday, Koehn made good on her promise. The poem she read is called "Nancy and Iris." Here, with Koehn's permission, is the poem in its entirety. Click the audio to hear Koehn read.
"Nancy and Iris"
By Nancy F. Koehn
They live in the shadows now,
Placeholders for the past.
Terrible it was for each
Of their sons. The leave-taking
So sudden, unthinkable
Even as it happened.
Nancy's boy ran wild in the woods,
Feeding on squirrels and
Indiana acorns.
Savage-like, he and his sister
Waited for Tom to come back
With his gun and his new bride.
Before his father left,
They had made the box. The boy
Carving the pegs for the corners
While Tom hewed the long slats.
Then it was time; she vanished below.
The grave windswept, unresisting,
As the panther's scream filled the night
And the nine-year-old boy with fear.
Across an ocean and the years
That piled on toward our time,
The son of Iris bounced off
The walls in the Dublin house.
Skirting round the black hole of grief
And the blood at the churchyard gate.
The hole grew wide and then deep;
The weeks became months and then years.
His father would not speak of the
Collapse that became an ending.
It had come so quickly:
A brain bleed at her father's
Funeral. Four days on life support;
Her sons called in to say goodbye,
As Sarah and Abe had stood by
Nancy's bedside in an older time.
Iris lay immobile while her children
Crept in, their faces drawn. A switch
Was pulled. He felt the house come
Crashing down. Cut adrift in
Space and time, he staggered farther
Along into his 14th year.
From the shadows, each woman
Looked on as her son tried to
Walk on. At time, each stumbled
Into blackness: dark and deep and
Unrelenting. They both ran from
The emptiness: Abe into books,
Ideas, a way out from Tom's life.
Paul — later Bono — into music,
While his father said: don't dream.
The boys became men. Still they ran.
Recognition, a public stage
Pulling them on; the spectre of
Redemption behind the milestones.
For Nancy's son: a court case won,
The next election, an audition
At Cooper Union: right makes might,
Daring to do our duty.
The scene was then transported.
And the war came. Sumter,
Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg.
Fiery trial. From deep within,
A wellspring of compassion and
Vision. From these honored dead,
He found increased devotion,
To save the Union and remake it,
Transmuting the base metal
Of his grief, our grief, into
Terrible, almighty gold.
A new birth of freedom, mined
At fearsome cost, then and now.
The son of Iris took up
His pick axe. He had found platinum
After chasing record contracts, fans,
Top-of-the-charts. Now he wanted more:
A bigger stage, a broader quest,
He dug for justice: debt relief,
Medicine, music and politics.
Where you live should not decide,
Whether you live or whether
You die. Ireland and Africa.
Iris inside of him, and now,
In others around the world.
Nancy and Iris. Do they know
These two women, ripped so early
From their sons, what their boys did
With all the love? What they still do
From the black hole, the shock and awe,
That was their mothers' leaving?
"Nancy and Iris," copyright 2014 Nancy F. Koehn, reprinted here with permission.
