What For
Garrett Hongo
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At six I lived for spells: how a few Hawaiian words could call up the rain, could hymn like the sea in the long swirl of chambers curling in the nautilus of a shell, how Amida’s° ballads of the Buddhaland in the drone of the priest’s liturgy could conjure money from the poor and give them nothing but mantras,° the strange syllables that healed desire. I lived for stories about the war my grandfather told over hana cards,° slapping them down on the mats with a sharp Japanese kiai.° I lived for songs my grandmother sang stirring curry into a thick stew, weaving a calligraphy of Kannon’s° love into grass mats and straw sandals. I lived for the red volcano dirt staining my toes, the salt residue of surf and sea wind in my hair, the arc of a flat stone skipping in the hollow trough of a wave. I lived a child’s world, waited for my father to drag himself home, dusted with blasts of sand, powdered rock, and the strange ash of raw cement, his deafness made worse by the clang of pneumatic drills, sore in his bones from the buckings of a jackhammer. He’d hand me a scarred lunchpail, let me unlace the hightop G.I. boots, call him the new name I’d invented that day in school, write it for him on his newspaper. He’d rub my face with hands that felt like gravel roads, tell me to move, go play, and then he’d walk to the laundry sink to scrub, rinse the dirt of his long day from a face brown and grained as koa° wood. I wanted to take away the pain in his legs, the swelling in his joints, give him back his hearing, clear and rare as crystal chimes, the fins of glass that wrinkled and sparked the air with their sound. I wanted to heal the sores that work and war had sent to him, let him play catch in the backyard with me, tossing a tennis ball past papaya trees without the shoulders of pain shrugging back his arms. I wanted to become a doctor of pure magic, to string a necklace of sweet words fragrant as pine needles and plumeria,° fragrant as the bread my mother baked, place it like a lei of cowrie shells and pikake° flowers around my father’s neck, and chant him a blessing, a sutra.° |
Making Meanings
What For
1. What images stood out for you as you read the poem? Why were they so effective?
2. What do you think the speaker means by saying “I wanted to become a doctor of pure magic” (line 53)?
3. What does the title of the poem mean?
4. Identify the two refrains of the poem. What effects do each of them have?