It is the last class of the day & I am teaching a classroom of sixth graders about poetry & across town a man has walked into a Starbucks & blown himself up while some other men throw grenades in the street and shoot into the crowd of civilians & I am 27 years old which means I am the only person in this room who was alive when this happened in New York City…
—from “Jakarta, January” by Sarah Kay, online on “Poem-a-Day,” 2/11/2019
All of our children developed a love of travel when they were young, but everything that happened to our youngest, Tim, seemed to single him out for foreign adventure. When we lived in Neuchâtel for a year, it was an advantage to be the youngest, so he could basically learn French — the “purest” French, as the Swiss told us — along with his classmates. On his first report card, his teacher wrote, below his grades, “trop de bavardage en classe” — too much gabbing in class. We were so proud.
Years later, as a senior at Eckerd College, he was walking across campus, possibly wondering what on earth he was going to do next, when he met Professor Richard Bredenberg, who casually asked him if he’d like to teach English for a year in Takamatsu, St. Pete’s “sister city” in Japan. Well, problem solved, though not for us. We worry about Tim, and all our heavy-traveling children, in today’s dangerous world.
Now living in Jakarta and working for USAID, Tim’s job is to try to make life better, healthier, for the 264 million Muslims living in Indonesia. He has a five-year appointment there, but when President Trump was elected we figured that wouldn’t last. Would Trump want to fund a program that helps Muslims live longer? But nothing’s happened, so we figure Trump hasn’t heard of it; he may not know where Indonesia is.
But we do, and when I read Sarah Kay’s poem I knew this was a true story, and the terrorist attack occurred very close to Tim, who hadn’t mentioned it in his calls and emails. In Kay’s poem she connects this attack with our horrific 9/11, when she was an 8th grader in New York City, and her class was put on “lockdown,” an unfamiliar word back then but, to our sorrow, known by all schoolchildren today.
Kay’s a well-known “performance” poet — look up her TED talks online — whose poems are packed with surprises, vivid observations and passionate emotion, along with a good dash of humor. My taste is definitely for poems in books, which I read over and over. But I’m happy to have found Sarah Kay and her work.
This brings me back to Tim and his family, out there in Jakarta, and the rest of our children. Gretchen once flew to Trieste to give a scientific presentation at a conference, packing up her own bicycle; after the conference, she fit the bike together and bicycled on her own from Trieste to Florence. Perrie lives in Italy, and Pete worked on and off for decades in Beijing and Shanghai. But the truth is, we can no longer can say, Why don’t you stay home, where it’s safe? Parkland, they’d say to us. Pulse.
Kay’s poem tells us there are no safe places anymore, violence is widespread and random; maybe poetry can help those who are so inclined, but there’s no real answer when children ask their questions. Don’t be afraid, we tell them. We love you.
tomorrow a sixth grade girl will come to class while her father has the
shrapnel pulled from his body & maybe she will reach for poetry & the
sky outside the classroom is so terribly blue & the students are quiet &
looking at me & waiting for a grown-up or a poem or an answer or a
bell to ring & the bell rings & they float up from their seats like tiny
ghosts & are gone
—Both quotes from “Jakarta, January,” by Sarah Kay. Her most recent book is All Our Wild Wonder (Hatchette Book Group, 2018).
This article appears in Feb 21-28, 2019.