‘Concerning the Stranger Under the Tree’

Photographer: HP Yater is a nonbinary artist and poet from Eastern North Carolina, where they were raised by two Northern parents, a white mother and black father. So their perspective is normally one that is not often thought of or even considered, but they are always there taking notes in various colorful notebooks. They graduated from Lenoir Community College in 2015 with an Associates in Liberal Arts, while also in high-school they were president of the creative writing club for four years.

“Concerning the Stranger Under the Tree”

and I saw them, yes—I saw them, saw them utterly,
saw them with the slow and brutal exactitude of the day’s too-honest light,
that light that does not blink, that light that does not blush,
that civic, moral, municipal light,
saw them under the tree—not near the tree, not beside the tree,
but under it, within its underneath, as if grown by it, dropped from it,
like a failed fruit or a meditative thorn,
with their hands on their head, yes,
their hands on their head, as if compressing thought,
as if stopping time by the crown,
as if sealing in the vapor of their own interior breakdown—
and I, I who passed, I who passed and paused, I who paused but passed,
I who had no name for them, I who still do not,
I who measured them with the slow sympathy of an overfed century—
felt—yes, felt—something.

Felt what? Felt what? O catalog of irreducibles,
felt the titillation of what is it,
of what might it be,
of what occasion leads a body to fold like that,
of how long have they been sitting thus,
of has something happened or will something happen,
or is it always like this,
or have I seen this before, or have I never,
and is this grief? or is it an imitation of grief? or is it rest? or is it
the most private form of political collapse?
and I leaned forward not in gesture but in gaze,
not in body but in want, in the abstract hunger
that modernity permits but never feeds—
that half-erotic civic ache for connection,
that tourist impulse toward the tears of others,
that museum-like melancholy of one’s own unbrokenness.

O stranger, strange not because unknown,
but because unknowable, incurably outside—
stranger with no name, stranger with no story,
stranger who sat and did not ask for me,
who folded inward like a manuscript the world had given up on,
stranger whose hands touched the head not to caress
but to close, to press, to weld thought to skull,
I saw you, I saw you, I saw you like a symptom,
like a revelation on the wrong street—
I saw you and I felt.

Felt, yes—felt with all the bloated organs of 4 PM modernity,
with its sympathies broadcast wide and shallow,
with its griefs secondhand and digitized,
with its reflex for caring that ends at the curb,
I felt for you, stranger, in every way that costs nothing,
in every way that floods the chest but never bleeds,
in every way that makes one want to be near—but not sit,
to understand—but not ask,
to care—but not speak.

and wasn’t it relief too?
Be honest, be sordid, be modern:
wasn’t it also the exhale of thank god it’s not me,
the selfish solidarity of the spared?
the smugness of the passerby’s grace,
the joy of not being crushed at that moment,
the glee of walking upright while another folds,
the narcissism of compassion that turns each stranger’s pain
into a temporary aesthetic of one's own inward drama?

But then—then, my god—
then came the helplessness of not knowing,
the complete lack of context,
the absence of prelude,
the deficit of narrative.
I wanted to ask, to intervene, to help, to disappear,
to mother them, to brother them, to lover them,
to disciple, to diagnose, to donate, to disappear again,
to be the brief angel of something that fixes—
but I could not, I would not, I should not.

Because the tree under which they sat was also a wall,
and their hands were a gate closed from within,
and their posture was a text I could not scan,
and their silence was not an invitation,
and I—I who had passed, paused, passed—
was only modern, only momentary,
only a consciousness passing through,
only the eye, the ache, the instant,
only the flitting electric sorrow of one who can never fully kneel.

and I walked on, didn’t I?
Of course I did,
as all things do.
and they remained.
and I remain not knowing if they remain still.
and that is the contract:
the brief incision of the other,
the glance that opens and does not close,
the knowledge that this city is filled with epics
that will never be written,
with sorrows that are perfectly silent,
with strangers who will never be less strange.

O modernity, O tree, O folded body, O hands on head,
O extravagant ache of the eye,
O thrill of grief not mine,
O theater of anonymity,
O politics of sidewalk pity,
O lovely shame of not-knowing—
I carry you now,
like a wound without cause,
like a map to a place I was never meant to go.

Yanis Iqbal is currently studying at Aligarh Muslim University, India. His poems have been published in outlets such as Radical Art Review, Culture Matters, etc. Two of his poems were also selected for inclusion in the Anthology of Contemporary Poetry: Meet the Poets of Today.