At the City of Dublin’s 2017 State of the City address, Ohio Poet Laureate and Dublin resident Dr. Amit Majmudar delivered a powerful poetry reading, written himself about the place he calls home.
Amit is a novelist, poet, essayist, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist (M.D.). He writes and practices in Dublin, Ohio, where he lives with his wife, twin sons, and baby daughter. Read more about Amit in this article from the June/July 2016 issue of Dublin Life.
America.
I cannot hold it as one body in my arms
And so I hold it as one thought in my mind,
Its north and its south
One word in my mouth
America.
To know a land with all its flaws and faces
You have to know exactly where your place is;
And for me and mine that place is
My city, where even the parkways are emerald,
My town and my country, my Kansas and Oz, my name and my voice,
My inspired Scioto, my James and my Joyce,
The Hard Road I travel by choice,
My shire, my Rings, my tis of thee I sing,
My choir, my psalm, my shelter and shalom,
My Ireland, my India, my Dublin, my home.
Who am I? I am one of everyone: I buried
The settlers whose cemetery’s
Out behind the library,
And before the first of those pioneer graves
I was the Wyandot sprinter, fleet of foot, who gave
His name to the woods, to Indian Run,
My ghost come out to bake a little in the brittle January sun.
I felt I was a Dubliner long before I arrived here,
Before I brought my twin toddlers and wife here
And told her, Love, what’s say we raise our boys here,
Welcome our newborn daughter, play and pray and rejoice here
In Dublin, where look, the fire hydrants are green,
In Dublin, from now on our city, our future’s opening scene.
And living here we’ll have a share in its life, its spark,
We’ll hike and bike its hundred miles of paths
And watch our boys play soccer in its parks,
Balgriffin, Avery, Emerald Fields and Royal Plume and Coffman,
And often in the summer we’ll
Gallivant to the Ballantrae Fountains
And dance with the rabbits on the hill.
We moved there; we splash there still,
We watch her laugh and grow,
Our daughter born
At Dublin Methodist just three Julys ago.
So that’s the Dublin that I introduce to you,
And if you know this place at all, I’d bet
My praise is hardly news to you.
But let it be said again, in all the voices, accents, tongues, and tones
That call this city home,
Students and senior citizens, parents with strollers and sidewalk joggers,
Everyone better, and better and better,
Everyone smarter together—
Entrepreneurs and retirees,
Teachers and cops and doctors writing poetry,
Everyone you see
Living their lives, making a living in this Perimeter of joy
Ringed by Glick, Sawmill, and Hyland Croy,
The best of cities in the best of states in the best of nations,
Our creativity and our creation,
This city whose power is how it empowers,
This gift of a city, this Dublin of ours.