This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
Growing up, poet James Brasfield spent his summers with his grandparents. His grandfather was a veterinarian, and sometimes James accompanied him to his rounds on the farms. Today’s poem, “The Ritual,” comes from one such experience.
After 30 years of teaching, James Brasfield retired from Penn State University. His books of poems include "Ledger of Crossroads," "Infinite Altars" and "Cove," as well as a collection of translations. Twice a Senior Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine, he’s received fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He’s won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Prize in Translation and received a Pushcart Prize for a translation, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
According to Robert Frost, “The farm is a base of operations–a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development.” As today’s poet, James Brasfield, explains, “One day at a farm, I helped with a castration in a paddock outside a barn. . . . from time to time as I held one of the ropes that held the horse down . . . , I looked beyond the treetops to a clear blue sky: the glances were momentary ascents from what was for that boy a mysterious event, perhaps an initiation . . . much now to think about.”
Here’s “The Ritual” by James Brasfield.
The Ritual
I stood holding a rope end
at a barn the morning
my grandfather,
the county veterinarian,
made me one of the tribe.
We brought the colt down
gently by the galvanized tub
on the grass. Grandfather
shredded sheets, dropping strips
into a milky antiseptic.
As if to draw an arc, pencil
on paper, he drew the scalpel
over the scrotum. Blue-veined,
bloodless as a boiled egg,
a gray testicle was born.
Ball in hand, he cut the muscle.
All the while the horse was walleyed.
Staring, I pulled the rope end
tighter, hopeful that holding down
the horse was not dependent on me.
When the next testicle
was taken, I wanted to let go,
but we all held taut while Grandfather
stuffed wads of sheet into the cavity.
He stitched the loose skin.
He patted the horse.
We dropped our ropes.
In that way a horse will stand,
he stood, still at first
to gain his bearings.
Being tamed as he was,
he walked within
that mute circle of the ritual.
I was listening to rags
slopping the emptiness.
(from "Cove," LSU Press, 2023)
That was “The Ritual” by James Brasfield. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
